


When to Quit.  1-7/7.

by punky_96



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 22:56:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10774224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punky_96/pseuds/punky_96
Summary: After “After the Flood”- before “There’s No `I’ in Team”.  Erica finds out about Sloan and pulls back.  Erica’s been this close to a woman before without kissing.  Callie doesn’t quit because it finally clicked for her that she wants Erica, but maybe something else clicked for Erica.(I am transferring fics over as they were originally posted.  If you did not like the fic in the first place, then do not waste your time re-reading it.)





	1. One

**When to Quit—Part 1 ******

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To anyone on the outside looking in, I would appear to be the calmer more confident one. I am actually, what with Callie’s speech about the motherland and safe words and an embassy. Seriously? Yes, I most certainly am the calmer more confident one. That doesn’t mean that my brain isn’t on some kind of crack crazed hamster wheel of craziness over all of this. I may know how to diffuse her panic and say the right thing, but am I saying the real right thing?

Callie and I became friends on accident and we became best friends on accident. That’s how it happens anyway. Your first day of school, the kids you meet or moving to a new neighborhood and the kids on your street, or you’re getting picked on and for some reason this person stands up for you… And a bond is formed out of the proximity, the routine, the getting in trouble together, or the thrill of adventure. Or the damaged hearts that sing to each other. Then you are friends. Friendship isn’t on purpose; it can’t be that’s politics.

What about romance? That happens on accident too, doesn’t it? I mean you run into someone at a bar, or grocery shopping, or get a flat tire in a parking lot, or go to a friend’s dinner party, or they’re the new person on your street or at the office, right? And it just happens. You choose to date based on whatever flimsy glimmer of chemistry there is and you see what happens. So you’re hanging out and one day you realize that you are in love. And sometimes you’re not sure when you first started to feel that way. Yeah you were dating and maybe fooling around, but when did it become love?

(Evil cynic in my head, just stop, ok. On-line dating while the intent is romance, it is not guaranteed. So the people hope to meet with that purpose, but it still takes time and sneaks in accidentally. Yes, compatibility profiles might make is more likely that the match is a match, but still they’re in business because of that accidental factor where it just has to appear on it’s own.)

And what about now, with Callie? We are more than friends and I don’t really know how that happened. I kissed her as some kind of joke or dare or fit of insanity, but she went a little nuts and then kissed me in front of the hospital. The front door to the chief and everybody and I still can’t believe it, but I can’t regret it either. I kissed her back and then we avoided each other for a couple of weeks in a fit of what the hell was that, because neither of us had any courage left and couldn’t bear to see the rejection in the other’s eyes.

Then Callie approached me and we stumbled through enough conversation that we established that we both didn’t know what we were doing, we were both scared, and we were willing to be both together. So a friendly little cloud descended upon us to shield us for a little bit. We laughed and talked and we were more than friends again. It was okay to catch each other staring. It was okay to hug a little more than before. It was okay to rest on the other’s shoulder curled on the couch watching a movie.

Then I had to ask about the date. It worked out well. Callie came in flustered with a crazy speech, and when I finally figured out what she was freaked out about, it was actually funny. I wasn’t ready for any of that either. I was kind of kidding about the take your clothes off date comment. I mean that’s traditionally what a date is, although traditionally you don’t go `there’ on the first date anyway. Second base. I feel kind of juvenile, but I’m also high as a kite. Coming home from a first date—you know the buzz—listening to music, grinning like an idiot, wanting to call even though you just left, replaying each word and movement in your head. It’s insane really; Callie and I have been friends for months and intense friends at that. Sunrise yoga, all night dancing where we just went in to work instead of going home to nap before coming in—yeah, how can it be that the first date was like we didn’t know each other and I’m flooded with all this giddiness?

And like all first date giddiness, there’s a little part that desperately hopes the other person is high on life from it all too. And like any 12-year-old girl, there’s a small part that worries that the other person wasn’t exactly there with you. It’s funny all of that anticipation, excitement, and euphoria is still there like you’re 12 all over again. The not so funny part is that by 40 you also have the added feelings of previous heartaches, fear of intimacy, and a morbid knowledge that relationships too often have some really bad parts, or just don’t make it at all.

***

Not even a week later and I see Callie coming out of an on-call room. She looks frustrated, angry even, and confused. She doesn’t see me and if Bailey hadn’t just come up to me, then I would have gone over to her despite my fear of people knowing how I feel about her. Bailey’s got a construction worker that is in cardiac distress and she needs a consult. Callie didn’t really look around when she came out of the on-call room, but she paused as if in thought and then shook her head and trudged off down the hallway re-adjusting her clothes like they don’t fit her right. Bailey has to repeat herself and she looks around to see what my attention is on. She sees Callie and then she is looking at me like she did the day before our date. She doesn’t say anything, but gets back to the patient chart and we begin to work out the details of his case. The on-call room door opens up and Mark Sloan walks out. He’s adjusting his lab jacket and also looks thoughtful. He checks his pager and walks down the hall in the same direction as Callie went. I drop the chart. Bailey holds her breath. She meets my eye as I rise up with the chart in hand. She doesn’t say anything. I don’t say anything. We don’t have to.

I am glad that I’m not alone—literally not alone. I have someone and something to focus on for right now. I also have the strange feeling that I am not alone in my ideas either, Bailey’s tight lipped, but her looks tend to say what she generally is thinking. It’s what I’ve always liked about her. Besides as I stand here registering details, it occurs to me that: Callie processes her stuff out loud, she’s prone to inappropriate nonsense speeches, and Bailey is the only person at Seattle Grace who I would imagine saying words like motherland and embassy. I’m not sure why this last piece clicks into place, but Yang, Grey (either one), Bambi, Karev and the Man-Whore would not have come up with the motherland. And Izzie Stevens would have fainted dead away if Callie had brought the possibility of a romantic kind of conversation up with her.

So I nod at Bailey, who nods back with a grim tightening of her lips. She turns to look down the hall and lets out the breath she’s been holding and looks disappointed. Bailey is paged to her patient and that snaps both of us into action. The construction worker provides the needed motivation to move. There’s no talking even though we get in the famous Seattle Grace elevators. There’s very little breathing.

It’s a complicated surgery and my shift is nearly over when I scrub out. I shower, dress, and walk out in a daze. Callie sees me in the elevator and begins to approach me. I just stare at her as if I am not in my body and feel nothing. It is a blank stare—no anger, no disappointment, no friendliness. Her face drops and she heads to the elevator. Thank the heavens that she does not get to it in time. Thank the heavens that Meredith and Derrick have taken this opportunity to have some pleasant conversation in the other elevator. Callie is in great shape, but she won’t be able to take the stairs in the amount of time that it will take me to get out to my car.

At home it hits. Well, actually, at my friend’s house that I’m housesitting for. I’m only really feeding the dog once a day and if I have time taking it for walks, but I want to be alone tonight and don’t want to even imagine Callie coming to my door. If the lights are out and there’s no car in the driveway, it should be pretty clear that I’m not home. And who would want to be home now anyway? Callie’s pajamas are in the guest room and the bed is a mess. Her extra hairbrush, gel, and toothbrush are in the guest bathroom as well. Her favorite wine is in the refrigerator. The dishes from our dinner last night are in the sink. And a picture of her is taped up behind the sink as a smiley reminder of all that’s good in the world. Yeah. I don’t want to go home.

So Theresa is blessedly gone for three weeks and her dog is big and calming and her house is warm and cozy and Callie free. There’s a selection of tea, and movies, and various foods in the pantry and the freezer. I just have to make it two days this week and then I’m off for two days. I’m the boss of my OR and I scare interns and I’m the best in my field despite everyone being blinded by Preston Burke. I know the truth and so does he, so I don’t let it bother me anymore. I do seem to let Callie bother me though.

I fall asleep on the couch with the dog on my legs and feet, a blanket over the top of me and the television still on in the living room. I’ve set no alarm and not even changed out of my clothes. I didn’t eat dinner and upon waking and realizing where I am and why I’m there—I don’t think that I’ll be eating breakfast either. I grab a box of crackers from the kitchen counter and find the pager that woke me up. Bailey 911. Must be the construction worker. He had a rough day and his recovery must not be going too well either. At least I will start out busy. I brush my teeth, brush my hair and decide to wear the same clothes as yesterday and just go to work as is. I don’t mind Bailey and perhaps Callie knowing that I’m not entirely ok. I need someone to know, since I won’t ever actually tell anyone.

Bailey greets me and gives me the once over. I get up to speed on the patient and we agree to meet in the OR. As I go to change, I pass Callie at the nurses’ station. She blinks at me a couple of times because I am looking directly at her, but I don’t slow down and she’s unable to stutter out anything intelligible. I am glad that she’s not ok either. She shouldn’t be.

And so the day passes… I work on the construction worker again, and then a couple of other cases that were already scheduled. My lunch comes at an odd time and I don’t really want to eat anyway. I grab an iced tea and some more crackers. I don’t want to pass out or get an ulcer or something. I need fresh air though, not air clogged with co-workers. I would stand on the breezeway near the chief’s office, but I don’t want to talk to him, and I don’t want to run into anyone either on the breezeway or looking down below either. I head up to the roof. If the view from the breezeway is so nice, then the roof’s got to have it beat right?

I go to Theresa’s again that night. I have to feed the dog and I really did sleep well despite my crack loving hamster of a brain going into overdrive. I thought I’d be more destroyed to not even have contact with Callie. I had spent some therapy time on the fact that I’d realized we were more than friends, and what did I feel about that and what fears I had and how I was going to deal with it. I was concerned of course about ruining a friendship, since it was so hard for me to make friends, and it was so painful to lose them.

I wish that Callie and I had talked more now. I wish that we’d had more time, taken advantage of moments that we tried to ignore. Maybe she wouldn’t have freaked out like she did. Maybe she would have been calmer about figuring this all out. Maybe she wouldn’t have slept with Mark Sloan in front of my face less than a week after our first official date where we had finally agreed that we would be scared, kind of virgins, together, and that second base was ok if we had an embassy and a safe word. I still wasn’t sure what a safe word was, but I agreed to have one because it seemed important to Callie and it couldn’t be too harmful since it was called a `Safe Word.’

I would have told her why I seemed more calm and confident that she did. Yes I was older, yes I go to therapy to talk about issues (instead of a not at all qualified man-whore), but that’s not the only reason that I’m calmer. I’m calmer because I’ve done this before. No, I’ve never kissed another woman before, but this more than friendship, hamster crack wheel brain, what the hell—yeah, I’ve done that before. It didn’t end well. It just ended—suddenly. It was surprising and painful and wonderful and shocking, and the reason that I began therapy in the first place.

Molly and I had been best friends in medical school. We studied together, mocked our fellow interns together, challenged each other and a friendship was formed. It was accidental. We had a similar distaste for the happy fluffy people around us. We were in classes together even though our future interests were very far apart. We fell into it easily. We couldn’t help but go out to play darts, which she would win every time, because she wouldn’t teach me her secrets. We couldn’t help but watch the same movies and laugh at horrible quotes and tease each other. I don’t know when it became more than friends. Maybe the night she finally taught me her dart secrets. We were awfully touchy and drunk. It was almost the end of the year and we would be interning together.

She was behind me hands on my hips to direct them, hands on my arms to show how to move them, mouth in my ear to tell me to relax and hold the dart just so until I released it, her leg between mine moving it to a proper stance. And then she was staring at me drinking her beer and watching me hit the bulls’ eye with each dart. I caught her staring and as I blushed she shyly looked away. We went back to my apartment since it was walking distance and we couldn’t drive. We fell asleep together on the couch after fighting over some nonsense and she said she shouldn’t have told me her secrets about darts and she’d never live it down. It was innocent, but in the light of dawn I realized that it wasn’t and she must have too.

Things were odd after that. We didn’t totally avoid each other like Callie and I had, but it wasn’t the same. At the last minute she called me and we met for coffee and a walk at the park. She said that she was going to intern across the country to be closer to her grandfather who was declining in health. She said to watch for her in the medical journals because she was going to be changing neo-natal surgery before I knew it. I put my hand on hers and she didn’t move away. I told her I didn’t understand why she was doing this and leaving me behind. I told her I couldn’t stand the thought of living without her and having to deal with all of the happy fluffy people. She interlaced her fingers with mine. We didn’t say anything for a while as we walked. Before I knew it we were at her car and she pulled me in close for a hug. She looked deep into my eyes and she said that I knew why she had to leave. She looked into my eyes for a few more moments as I stuttered about how I needed her to stay. Then she kissed me on the cheek and dropped my hand so that she could hold my head and keep my cheek next to hers. It was so intimate and so painful. I couldn’t breathe. She got in the car and drove away. She didn’t call me to say when she moved or that she got there safely. She never told me about being an intern so far away from me—or anything else in her life from then on. 

I moved on. I trudged through the internship and residency. I became a cardio-god and traveled away from where it had all began. I heard of her over the years. Besides Addison Forbes Montgomery, Molly was the best in her field. Really, they were each the best in their field, because they had slightly different specialties within the neo-natal field. Addison even mentioned Molly during her visit with the baby who had its heart on the outside. It made my heart skip a beat to hear Molly’s name inside the walls of Seattle Grace, but it was only one skip, and by then Callie had my heart racing.

I wish I had been able to tell Callie all of that. I wish we had been more conscious of ourselves and used our time better. As it is now, I don’t think I have to worry about time together. I just wish we hadn’t gone far enough that this feels like a break up, which usually means `not friends.’ Of all the horribleness of this situation and the one with Molly all those years ago... Losing the friend hurts so much.

My friend, Callie, is whom I’d like to talk to. I’ve made these realizations and I want to talk with her about Molly and all the time I’ve wasted, and how much I’ve learned with the romantic Callie. She’s a good sounding board, when she’s not all flustered and talking about undiscovered country. I mean I went about my life as a fairly reserved straight woman. I didn’t have an incredible urge to date so I just didn’t that often. Maybe the reason was that I hadn’t met anyone I was that interested in because I wasn’t looking at women as well. I think love is about the person and not so much about the gender, but I think that I was raised so much with the outlook that romance would be found with a man, that it never occurred to me to look at women as well. Molly and Callie both became friends with me through the usual accidental ways and we fell into more than friends at some point where love dropped in unannounced, but I never really thought to look for a woman. Now I guess I do need to open myself to that possibility. I need to go back to Dr. Wyatt as well to help mull through this business, but really, I need a rest from it if I can get one.

Day 2 of waking up at Theresa’s. I’m still disoriented, but this time I did set the alarm and I ate a can of soup for dinner. I even got off the couch and slept in the bed, which was much more comfortable. My cell phone rang a couple of times, but I turned it off. I’m suffering, so Callie can too. I go to work in my scrubs. I might as well. I don’t have a lot of clothes with me and I just don’t really care. Today Callie sees me at lunch. She is walking towards Sloan and myself and because of our locations it’s unclear whom she’s intending to walk towards. He is texting on his blackberry so I cannot tell if he is expecting her or not. I have gone out of body again, which I’m finding is really convenient. I wish I could count on it and use it, like a drug-induced coma. I finish the last bite of my grilled cheese and make my way to the trashcan, also partly heading towards her.

“Erica-” she starts in her I’m going to freak out and have a speech meltdown kind of voice.

“Save it.” I cut her off. “I’ve got surgery in fifteen.” I pause to take a breath and exhale with, “You quit. I get that.” I leave her standing there in the middle of the lunch area, huffing in her frustrated kind of way. Being out of body sure helps me to move through these impossible situations like a dream and it is helping me to keep my voice down and my comments minimal. I have other fish to fry, or rather hearts to stitch up and interns to scare, but in any case, I’ve got to go whether I want to talk or not. Since I’m not in my body to make it turn around and go to her, I move on out of the lunch area and up to surgery. Thank god that out of body feeling ends as soon as I smell the sterility of the OR and feel the cold air.

I make it through the afternoon and I’m in the attendings’ locker room when Callie comes in. I really thought it would take her longer to stand up to the situation. After the kiss in front of the whole hospital she avoided me for two weeks. I thought sure we would ignore each other for at least that long over this. And part of me wanted to ignore her for a lot longer. This was going to be so final. If we were ignoring each other, I could pretend that we were still friends, that there was more to this, it wasn’t finished. As she came closer to me I hoped for that out of body feeling to carry me through.

“Erica,” she began and stammered. “What. What was? What was that at lunch? What did you mean that I quit?”

Either she is truly stupid or really cruel or something that I can’t in a million years comprehend and my out of body feeling hasn’t come yet, so it hits me like a stack of bricks. “What was that at lunch? What was that about you quitting?”

She doesn’t say anything. I think she is coming to some kind of realization, some kind of recognition. I can feel her back up ever so slightly. She did not know how many rattlesnakes were in the bag that she reached her hand into.

“You agreed we would figure this out together.” I motion between her and I. I touch where my heart used to be and she is close enough that I touch where hers should have been as well. “You went on an official date with me. You made me agree to rules and an embassy and a safe word, whatever the hell that is.” I pause for full effect. I feel like I am the attending cardio-god explaining something that any first year intern should get and I’m scolding them for being so narrow-minded or neglectful or stupid. “Then you slept with Sloan, again. So I get it you quit.”

Her face dropped in all the right places just like my scared to death interns do with each new sentence that I utter. She looks like she’s ready to cry. I shoulder check her as I pass by her. There’s no way I’m going to the other side of the bench just to go around her. It’s my locker room—she shouldn’t even be in here. I also didn’t want to talk to her and she had to jump in. I get to the end of the bench and I hear her.

“I didn’t quit. I don’t quit.” It’s angry. I guess that the truth hurts. It hurts me anyway. She couldn’t even admit it when I called her on it. All she could say was that she didn’t quit. Whatever.

***

I pick up clothes and groceries and medical journals and head to Theresa’s for the weekend. I’m just going to stay at her house until she comes home. It’s like a mini-vacation. I did stay at my place long enough to clean it up a little. I put Callie’s stuff in a bag so that I can take it to work with me after the weekend. I know Callie has the weekend off too and I still haven’t answered her phone calls so I’m glad to have Theresa’s house to stay at and distract myself.

I thought that the days would drag more, but I seem to be going along pretty good. I sleep more than I should which is one symptom of not being so happy, but other than that, I’m holding up pretty well. I call and make an appointment to see Dr. Wyatt in a couple of days. I need to go over all this with her and see what makes sense. I’m not going to be able to go over it with Callie. Besides, my realizations go beyond Callie and speak of a future that I had no prior consideration of.

Not traditionally a weekend, I go back to work on Wednesday. It is Callie free, but I do run into Mark in the attendings’ lounge. He doesn’t say anything, but his look is concerned disappointment and sadness. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but he’s pretty far off my radar so I don’t care. He may be with Callie, he was before, and he may not be. The only thing that really matters is that she quit on me. It could have been anyone in that on-call room, but it wasn’t me and that’s the problem.

Thursday she corners me in the elevator. I tried to get out on the wrong floor but since she was the only one in the elevator she grabbed the back of my lab coat and held me still until the doors closed again. I gave her my death glare and she flinched. “Where were you this weekend? I tried to call you and I finally drove by your house…”

I snort out a laugh. “What? Why do you care?”

“I care. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you, but you won’t answer. I need to talk to you, Erica, please just talk to me. I can explain.”

“You came out of an on-call room disheveled, didn’t even notice me, and then Mark Sloan came out of the same on-call room, also disheveled. There’s nothing to explain. You weren’t okay with this, with us, and you’re ok with him. I get it. Leave me alone.” The elevator dings and I get out before she can reply.

***

The days go by. I meet with Dr. Wyatt and finally break down about it all. She congratulates me on my breakthrough about whom I can allow myself to fall in love with. She says that if I have learned something from these experiences with Molly and Callie, then they were not a waste of time. I don’t like that my pain is all part of a giant learning experience, like some kind of screwed up junior high lab in science, but then she reminds me that being an intern is the most painful part of being trained as a surgeon, and yet it is a time that we learn the most about who we are and who we are to become. That I get. It almost makes me want to be slightly nicer to the interns, but then I think that the more painful it was for me as an intern, then the more likely I was to learn from it. I know I never made the same mistake twice. Dr. Wyatt says that we’ll have to talk about scaring interns in a later session, but to hang in there with the relationship realizations.

I housesit and start having lunch with the chief to discuss teaching practices and rotating interns and residents to balance out their surgery time over all the specialties and how we can make Seattle Grace back into one of the top 5 programs. Being able to be a part of the change that needs to happen at Seattle Grace is a positive thing that I’d like to be a part of. Not only will I be able to refine my teaching skills so that I don’t `crush their spirits,’ but I can be associated with positive changes and a willingness to change. Enough people only see me as Attila the Hahn or the Ice Queen or whatever else they call me, it will be nice to be part of a larger positive force here at the hospital.

Occasionally Callie corners me. We have come to a vague truce. Not friends and certainly not more than friends, but not enemies either. We haven’t returned to the coffee, dancing, sunrise yoga and lunches that made up our life until recently, but we aren’t enemies. I like having lunch with the chief, maybe I had Callie shaped blinders on at work and this is a good thing that happened so I can be part of something really important to Seattle Grace. I came over here from Mercy to do great things, so now it’s time to step forward.

Callie basically says that she tried to sleep with Mark because she was so freaked out, even after our agreement. She says that it was awful and she pushed him away and cried and yelled at him, which does fit the combination of mess that she was as she left the room. It also fits that he left the room angry and confused. It fits even more that he hasn’t been snide or rude and that he even seems reflective and sad even. I don’t know what to believe. I miss Cal, I do, but I just don’t like the idea of her freaking out and going to him, or some other guy, or anyone else to figure it out. To top it off, she went to someone else, even after we had come to an agreement and decided to wait to see how it all went. I suggested first base—kissing—which hello, we’d already done. She countered suggestively with second base—which was a little freaky for me, but was the next necessary step in figuring it out. Hello—she made that suggestion. So no, I wasn’t forgiving her or buddying up to her again anytime soon, but we had established an un-easy friendship.

***

Theresa called and said that she’s extending her trip another week. When she got back to the states she decided to stay in New York and visit some old friends. I am secretly glad to know I have a safe place to hide, even though I am finally sleeping at my own place again and I don’t wake up and realize that Callie isn’t in my life each day. I am peaceful—sad, but peaceful. I am doing what I need to do to make good decisions and not hurt myself. Callie is going to have to re-build the friendship and trust first, and then she can decide if she wants to repair the more than friendship that we started. Hell, she doesn’t get to decide, unless she wants to quit for sure. No, I will have to decide at each step if that’s what I want too. Just because she comes around, which she seems to be trying to do, doesn’t mean that I’ll jump over it.

I’m finally feeling re-settled and then as I walk to the lunch table I see that the chief has a lady friend at the table. I don’t know if I am welcome here today. They are having a wonderful conversation and I can see the sparkle in his eye. This must be one of his favorite colleagues from some other life that none of us ever know about. Really for a plain, close to retirement, calm guy—he’s kind of mysterious. Part of me slyly wonders if he was a spy, which makes me smile to think. She has wavy light brown hair and she’s wearing a very smart pants suit. Am I checking her out? She’s sure got Richard’s attention. I’m about to turn off to go to another table, but the chief stands calling to me, and his companion stands as well, her green eyes locking mine, “Erica, Dr. Erica Hahn, good to see you. Come over here. This is…” As he turns to introduce his lady friend I drop my tray. She bends to help me pick it up and our hands touch. “This is Dr. Molly Gutierrez.” I hear the chief say over our heads, and I stand.

“Gutierrez?” I manage to stutter out. She smiles at me and hugs me tightly to her. The world is suddenly unsettled and I’m back to wishing for an out of body experience again. Seriously?

“Erica, so good to see you. I’ve missed you.” She hugs tighter than she should and hangs on for even longer. But it is like that first breath of air after you dive in for the first sunny day of the year and stayed under as long as you could and that breath of air is like God smiling directly on you with no doubts or questions or reservations. She lets me go and I blink at her.

“Oh, you know each other.” The chief says smiling. “Have a seat, have a seat. Now I don’t have to give my speech about how Addison Montgomery sang your praises… Erica Hahn is our head of Cardiothoracics.” He’s beaming, actually floating above the seat and sparkling, beaming. “So, uh, how do you know each other?”

“We were in medical school together, Richard.” Molly says without missing a beat. Then she’s smiling at me. It’s like Callie’s megawatt smile; only it’s brighter and more focused like a smaller LED light instead of Callie’s beaming megawatt spotlight. It’s not better, just different and I’m afraid it is going to begin a completely different kind of out-of-body experience.

We settle in to an easy lunch until Richard gets a page. He tells me that it’s Dr. Gutierrez’ first day tomorrow so I need to show her around and help her get the lay of the land so that she can hit the ground running tomorrow. I can’t speak as he drops this knowledge at my feet and leaves me alone with her. I don’t say anything. “If you’re over-booked this afternoon, Erica, then find Karev. He spent a lot of time with Addison and he can show her around.” I still say nothing, but I think that there’s no way in hell Karev is going to show Molly around anything, anywhere. He questions me with his eyes, and she puts her hand on my forearm and says, “We’ll be fine, Richard, go see what’s needed.” Her hand rests there comfortably.


	2. TWO

**When to Quit—Part 2**

 

  
Touring the hospital is a nice way to renew an old friendship.  There’s a purpose and topics to cover so that there doesn’t have to be awkward moments.  The locker rooms, the offices, the coffee carts, the surgical floors, operating rooms, and gallery—they all create a tapestry of discussion.  It is easy though, even after years of absence, and a horrible goodbye—it’s easy.  Callie sees us walking around talking.  I’m gesturing at various people and things.  I introduce Callie to Molly, but keep it formal.  Dr. Torres is a resident and Dr. Gutierrez is the head of Neo-Natal Surgery.  Callie backs off from my formal tone and is left staring at us as we round the corner out of sight.  My cell phone vibrates in my pocket and it’s a text from her asking who the new woman is.  I smile and ignore it.  
  
We decide to go to Joe’s after the day is over.  I had a fairly early shift and Molly is new in town so she’s happy to wait while I change.  At Joe’s I point out Grey’s Gang including Yang, and the newer interns including Little Grey.  We laugh and talk about other hospitals that we’ve worked at over the years and how there are always the same groups and a never-ending supply of happy fluffy people.  I tell her about the time that Yang wandered into dermatology and came back as if she was in a coma.  We laugh and it is easy and solid.  It’s like the intervening years were a step in the direction of our future and not the horrible ending of a friendship that it felt like at the time.  Our hands touch and we reach for each other’s shoulders or forearms like we haven’t been separated since kindergarten.  It is not playful or flirty, it’s just natural.  
  
McDreamy and McSteamy come over.  I swear they can taste fresh blood in the water.  I introduce them to Dr. Gutierrez.  I want them to be on the formal side with her so that she doesn’t have to put up with their foolishness.  I remember Sloan’s advances from the first day I got to Seattle Grace and I shudder to think about what would have happened if I had run into him at Joe’s and not known who him.  That would have been a horribly scandalous way to begin at SGH.  I know that it has sucked for Merideth Grey from what I understand that’s what happened to her, well, among other things.  
  
Pretty and Prettier go away shortly to admire from afar I suppose.  To his small credit McSteamy at least looked uncomfortable to be so close to me.  He made sure Derrick was closer, just in case, I’m sure.  I feel the need to explain the Seattle Grace gossip adrenaline high and rumor factory.  Molly laughs and tells me a story about a hospital that she worked at in California.  She goes on to say that Pretty and Prettier don’t stand a chance.  I tell her that’s what they all say, but she puts her hand on my forearm again and holds it there.  She waits for me to make eye contact and she lowers her voice, “They don’t have a chance, Erica.”  She smiles again.  My foot slips off the bar stool rung and I fall forward.  
  
“What?”  
  
“They.”  Something flashes in her eyes.  I can see her change her mind in that flash.  “They just don’t have a chance.”  I can see her putting barriers up, and then I get it.  The boys don’t have a chance.  Only she thinks that she’s over shared, or over stepped, or that I wouldn’t want to hear that.  
  
“Oh.”  I say and kick myself.  “Well, that’s good.  It’s best to stay out of the rumor mill as long as you can.”  I say trying to smooth things over so she’ll be at ease, but figure out a way to let her know I got it and I figured out something about myself as well.  It’s kind of hard to manufacture such an opportunity in a conversation, especially when I know that I’m not the conversationalist of the year.  
  
Callie walks up at this moment.  Really?  Right now?  We’ve been at the uneasy friendship thing for a while now and that’s that really.  What now?  She smiles as she walks up and brings me my favorite drink putting her hand on the small of my back.  “Hello Erica, Dr. Gutierrez.  I wondered if I could challenge you to a round of darts.  I don’t want to play with Yang anymore.”    
  
Her words hang there like the drink she brought sits on the table.  Molly looks for a long moment at the drink.  She seems to contemplate it and she shakes her head smiling a little, but her eyes seem a little sad.  Molly excuses herself to the bathroom.  “We were talking.”  I say flatly.  
  
“I could see that.”  She says, anger creeping into her voice.  “Since when do you make instant best friends?  I thought you didn’t make friends easily.”  There’s a hard edge to her voice-anger, hurt, jealousy.  Maybe all three?  A regular trifecta of emotion!  Hmm.  
  
I snort.  I actually snort.  This is so juvenile.  We couldn’t really talk, so now we’re going to do this?  She looks hurt though and so I offer her a bone.  “She’s my best friend from medical school and we haven’t seen each other in ages.”  
  
Molly comes back and asks who the winner is going to be in the darts game.  She looks happier now, a little mischievous.  She asks to play the winner.  I see where the twinkle comes from now.  It’s not fair and it’s funny so we both laugh.  It’s sad really that now Callie is the one left out of the joke, but she just stands there looking at me questioningly.  She’s examining my face like she’s never seen me before.  Callie is pretty good at darts, but she doesn’t have the same tricks that we do.  Callie looks uncomfortable, but we move over to an open dart board.  I play Callie on the first round.  She loses, but I make the score stay pretty close.  Then it’s time to play Molly.  My first dart falls short because I’m thinking of the last time that I played Molly in darts.  The last time we played, when she told me her secrets.  She laughs at me, until I tell her I demand that one not count on account I was thinking of the last time we played darts.  She stops laughing and gestures to go right ahead.  Callie excuses herself to the bathroom after that with an awkward grumbling sound in her throat.  
  
Molly goes to throw her dart and then she stops, just as her hand is back and raised, ready to release.  She stops, bringing her arm down and she faces me.  She waits until I look her in the eyes.  Her green eyes are blazing and searching mine.  It is familiar and I flinch a little.  “Did you change your favorite drink?”  She asks with a sad smirk curling around her eyes.  Is she asking about the drink, or…  No, I can’t even think that.  Yet, Molly used to know my favorite drink.  Molly used to be my favorite drink so to speak.  Now things have changed, I don’t drink the same thing and my more than best friend is different too.  I’m saved from answering as Callie returns.  They play a round and I watch them.  They represent my past and my present and my future.  Or they represent two pieces of the puzzle of my life that is still missing pieces?  Maybe?  What an odd situation.  Eventually Callie gets bored and leaves because Molly beats her every time, and she only ties me twice.  Callie knows that I let her tie too, and she hates it.  She doesn’t like for me to let her win.  Callie’s always been drawn to my hard ass, often inappropriate, attitude, cockiness, and self-assurance.  
  
Molly and I continue to play darts and I finally ask her about her name change.  “So, Dr. Gutierrez?”  
  
“Yes?”  She says a smile playing at the corners of her eyes.  
  
“How did you become Dr. Gutierrez?  You haven’t mentioned bringing a husband with you and we’ve been talking for almost 12 hours now.”  
  
“So blunt.”  She’s considering me know—considering her response.  It’s not like her.  “That’s you right?  Saying it pretty much straight out?  I’ve heard how you are around the hospital.”  She says it a little cold, but her eyes are smiling now.  I just gaze at her.  “That’s my Erica,” she says softly.    
  
I blink at her and clear my throat.  I hadn’t expected that.  “Uh, sorry?”  I don’t know if I’ve hit a nerve or what?  I know I brought up our last best time together and I felt the tension from our goodbye creep into the evening.  Now I wasn’t sure what I had hit upon.  
  
“Yes.  Erica, I had a husband.”  She sighs.  “Emilio Gutierrez.  He was a fantastic man.  I met him as a resident.  We were the picture book couple—an easy courtship, a normal engagement, and marriage.  Only we were just a picture book couple.  We hardly ever touched and he traveled a lot on business.  I had to fill my time with work and find friends to keep me company.  He came home from a business trip and found me in bed with my neo-natal attending.”  She says the last bit breathlessly and I feel like there’s something more to what she’s telling me.  
  
“So, he left you.”  I say gently, my hand reaching out to hers.  “Is that the whole story?  Did he hurt you?”  
  
She looks up at me then, vulnerable and searching my eyes.  It was like the last day when she searched my eyes and said goodbye.  The green was equally soothing and searing.  Only she wasn’t saying goodbye this time.  “No, he never hurt me.  He was destroyed by what I had done.  I replaced him with a woman, Erica.”  She had looked down at our hands and as she said my name she looked up into my eyes once again searching.  
  
“I’m sorry it had to be like that.”  I say and she pulls back.  “No, I , I mean I’m sorry that you had to have an empty marriage and fill your time with things you didn’t want.”  I stammer not knowing what to say.  I want her to know that I’m glad she’s here, that I’m glad she had an affair with a woman, that I am sorry that she had to be unhappy.  Her look is uncertain as she regards me and swishes her glass back and forth.  I reach out for her hand like before and hold it tighter, “It may be selfish, but I’m just so glad you’re here and it’s not weird.”  I say in one breath, and I look down at our hands on the table.  
  
***  
  
“ERICA!”  Callie is bone crushing mad and I can’t blame her.  I haven’t returned any of her calls, I haven’t talked to her in days.  Just now I ignored her as I walked past the nurse’s station and into the stairwell.  I ignored her and kept going, but I can hear her footsteps and the door should have shut already, but it hasn’t.  I turn to go down the flight of stairs and she hustles to keep up with me.  We reach the landing at almost the same time, but she cuts into the curve and cuts me off.  “Erica, what is going on?  I thought we were becoming friends again?  We were talking a little more.  I just, I need to know you’re okay.  It’s unbearable to not talk to you.”  
  
“It was pretty hard for you to talk to me in the first place.”  I manage to say evenly.  She’s crying and my eyes are starting to fill with tears.  
  
“Please, please forgive me for freaking out.  I’ve told you so many times that I don’t want him and that I was freaking out.  Please let me be your friend again.  I miss you so much…”  Her sobs choke her up.  
  
“I miss you too, Cal.  But you couldn’t talk to me.  How am I supposed to talk to you?  I wanted to talk to you.  I thought I was talking to you.  But it wasn’t enough, was it?”  I’m being honest about how I feel.  I can hear Dr. Wyatt in my head encouraging me to be open with my feelings.  But part of me wonders if it is more hurtful to her.  And another part of me wonders if I’m glad that it hurts her.  
  
“It was enough.”   She says quietly, “I just was colossally stupid.  I should have turned to you to figure it all out.  I should’ve let you know that when I was with you, I was calm, and the second that I wasn’t with you, I was freaked again.  But I miss you so much and I know that I need to get past the freaking so that I can be close to you again.  I just need to be close to you Erica.  You make everything okay.”  It’s so silent in the stairwell that I can’t believe it.  She was whispering, but my ears are ringing as if she had been shouting in my face.  I reach out and cup her cheek in my palm.  She leans into it.  
  
“I can’t be there for you, if you push me away like that.  It’s hard enough to be open at all, let alone at work, and let alone risking my best friend.  It’s so hard to be strong for you, when you crush me.  It shouldn’t be like this, Cal.”  
  
“Please, give me some time.  Give me some time to show you.”  
  
“Oh, Cal.”  I sigh.  I want desperately to believe her to let her back in.  I want the easy laughter and the comforting touches.  I want the crazy speeches and to be able to calm her.  I don’t want to be twelve and have her trying to work out her issues with Sloan or some other unqualified ass.  I go to therapy to work stuff out with a trained professional whose ass will be on the line if she lets drop my secrets.  “I can’t make any promises, Cal.  But let’s have dinner tomorrow.”  
  
“Where,” she starts and stops, fumbling for the words.  I can see my brain isn’t the only crack whore hamster inhabited one.  “Where were you on your days off?  I drove by again when you wouldn’t answer my calls.”  
  
I let out a big sigh.  She doesn’t really get to know, I mean, I don’t have to tell her do I?  “Cal, you can’t just come by my house.  That’s creepy.”  
  
“What?  You used to love it when I’d stop by unannounced.  I brought you roses a couple of times, remember?”  
  
“Yeah, that was…”  I trail off, even in my head it sounds so final, “That was then.”  She steps back a little more and reaches for the railing.  
  
“Oh.”  She says and I swear she goes to reach for her own heart, but catches herself in time and just runs her hand through her hair.  
  
“Look, Cal.  I don’t know.  I don’t know what to say or what to do.  I don’t know what will make it better.  But I haven’t shut you out completely which is what my instinct is telling me to do.  I’m hurt and you would be too.  So, I don’t know.  But I will tell you that I was at a friend’s house, house-sitting.”  I don’t tell her that Molly was there too.  I tell myself it’s unnecessary information and not relevant to what is going on between Callie and I.  
  
“Okay.”  She says shakily, “So, dinner tomorrow?”  I think she needs to sit down, but I’m not out of body and this is taking its toll on me. My crack whore brain hamster has invited about 20 of his friends down and they are dancing a hula all over my brain right now, but I’m still trapped quite painfully in my own body.  
  
“Yeah.”  I whisper and walk down the flight of stairs and out the door.  
  
Are there words to the hula songs?  I can’t think right.  There’s a steady drum pounding in my head.  There are 20 hamsters running around full speed, forget the wheel now.  It is as if my entire brain is one of those wall to wall trampoline rooms.  The hampsters are chanting and squealing and chattering all at the same time.  I miss the easy laughter and comforting touches…  I want to push myself to be open and work through the difficult conversations… Seriously.  My head is going to explode.  
  
I don’t miss Callie as much as I could.  Molly has beamed in from outer space and already we are full of easy conversations and comforting touches.  She has worked through some of the issues that originally tore us apart and I have come to some of my own realizations as well.  It’s like Callie told me there was water in the pipes and Molly has turned on the spigot.  Wait, I mean Molly told me about the water and Callie turned on the spigot.  Did I just think spigot?  What a crazy ass word.  I wonder if it will be in Callie’s next big `I’m crazy’ speech about the motherland and how she really wants the opportunity to go to that motherland, even though she clearly fucked up the first chance she got.  
  
Is Molly what Callie isn’t?  Molly is my same age, well within months anyway.  She’s already come to her own self-realizations and she is not afraid to talk about it or share in anyway.  She’s not fumbling.  And it is just so damn easy.  She came into work the first day and I showed her around, then she stayed with me at Theresa’s because it was much better than the hotel.  I had the next two days off and while she went to work, we still stayed at Theresa’s.  Then we each had an early shift and so we tried to find her an apartment.  It was fun getting lost on streets that I hadn’t been down in ages.  When at the end of the day we had not been successful and we stopped at my house, she said that it was too big for me and that I seemed kind of lonely.  We both said that she should take the extra bedroom at the same time.  At least until she found a decent place.  It was funny we both held back at the same time too.  
  
Molly isn’t fumbling, but am I?  Would I be ready to resurrect the glimmer of what we might have had?  I’ve never been with a woman.  I think that I liked Molly all those years ago, and I know that I thought I loved Callie, but mostly I don’t know.  I married my work.  I dated only a little, because not much caught my eye.  Work?  Well work was competition, and adrenaline, and doing good in the world.  Then it was the thrill of being the best and of teaching others.  What has it become though?  It has become coldness and berating interns and lonely.  Lonely like Molly said.  She’s only been here a few days and she could see through me like the old days.  I don’t think I’m fumbling though.  I’m ready for a relationship.  I’m ready to embrace the fact that the two times in my life that I was willing to be this close to someone, close enough to even think the word love, it was with a woman both times.  
  
***  
  
I text Callie that I’m going home and she should come over so we can go out for dinner.  Molly has a later shift and I am glad to be home alone for a brief time to gather my thoughts.  What do I want out of this dinner?  Why am I going to it, if I don’t want to go?  I curl up on the couch with a blanket.  I’m still there actively not thinking when my doorbell rings.  I get up to let Callie in.  
  
She has flowers again.  “Hey there.  Did you fall asleep?”  She gives me a shy smile as I take the flowers and look at her blinking my eyes to get them to open properly.  She is dressed up a little and has re-done her hair from earlier in the day.  I am sure that half of my face is red from being pressed into my arm on the couch and that I must have rumpled hair too.  I am in my comfy clothes that I changed into before I left work.  Clearly she has gotten ready and put effort into this evening, while I have just not.  “Can I come in?”  She interrupts my internal loop.  “It’s a little chilly and I see that you need to get ready.”  
  
“Oh,” I say and move to the side.  She hasn’t been over to my place in at least a month.  It must have been just after the ill-fated first date.  Wow, I realize how high my hopes had been.  I must growl out loud because Callie turns to me, with her eyes wide.  I shut the door and head past her into the kitchen.  She follows me silently.  I slap the flowers down on the counter, harder than I intended to.  I get a vase and the scissors.  I begin cutting the ends off the roses and putting them into the vase.  I finally look up halfway through.  She is near tears and just staring around the room.  
  
“Oh, what Cal?”  I angrily ask.  She’s the hurt one here, really?  
  
“You took down my picture.”  Oh yeah, that bag of her stuff is still in my trunk.  
  
“Yeah, I did.”  
  
There’s silence and then, “You said it was a badge of sunshine in your life and that I’d always be there to brighten your morning.  That’s why you put it by the sink.”  It’s quiet again.  I finish the roses and put them on the central counter in between she and I.  
  
“They’re beautiful, Callie.”  I say pointing at the roses.  “Let me go get dressed.  I see you are a little more dressed up than I am.”  I trudge off to my room and put a dress on quickly, then I yank it off and settle on some nice slacks and a comfortable scoop neck shirt.  I slip my feet easily into a pair of flats and then head back out.  Callie is still sitting near the bar in my kitchen and I have to get quite close to her to get my keys and purse.  She turns into me and I am suddenly aware of our nearness.  Our breathing slows down and we look into each other’s eyes, searching.  After a long moment she reaches up and smoothes my hair, finger brushing it.  I blush and pull away running my hands through it to smooth it out again.  We look at each other’s eyes again and chuckle.  I, Dr. Erica Hanh, Ice Queen, was about to go out in public with bed head.  Even I have to admit that idea is pretty funny.  
  
***  
  
Callie drove and I am glad because I think that maybe if I can drink a little the hamsters will have more than they can handle and just stop or at least slow down the madness in my brain.  The dinner went well and I was glad to not be assaulted with any serious conversation.  Dating never came up, Sloan never came up, and neither of us had to say how hurt we were by the shortcomings of each of us.  As we drive up to my place it is not awkward.  We have had a pleasant evening, but it has been somewhat superficial.  We haven’t had any touches, she is afraid of my harsh rebuke.  We haven’t talked about what we had, or why we lost it.  We have just tried to be friends.  I have always liked that about Callie.  She has an incredible capacity to care for people despite their flaws, and to make the most of the situation that she has been dealt.  In this case she has accepted me despite my harshness in the hospital and she has accepted that I feel hurt by her and I am shutting her out a little bit.  She is making the most of the situation that I’ve dealt her by not going away and by making the most of the time I will give her so she can show me she didn’t quit.  
  
It’s all light and easy and apparently normal until we arrive in my driveway and her usual spot is taken.  “Do you have a guest?”  I don’t say anything.  I can’t seem to think anything and I don’t know why.  “Erica, do you have family in town?”  Now, now she reaches out to touch me, to drag me out of my stupor.  There’s confusion and hurt in her voice.  I know she is wondering who could possibly be in my house, when I’m not there, when I have very few friends and almost no family.  
  
“It’s just Molly.”  I mutter out.  “She didn’t have a place to stay.  We tried to look for an apartment, but there wasn’t anything open right now that caught her eye.  So she’s staying here.”  
  
“Molly.”  She says it slowly like the way she had said virgins when we agreed to be scared together.  It’s an odd memory combination—her saying Molly’s name, but me thinking of agreeing with Callie.  Now it’s not almost normal.  That superficial surface has been shattered.  I caught her with Mark, but she’s been replaced so much so that a new best friend lives in my spare room.  The spare room that she used to call hers because she’d stayed over so often.  “Wow.  Just wow.”  
  
“Callie.”  I begin, but she cuts me off.  
  
“I had a great time with you at dinner Erica.  I hope you enjoy the roses.  I need to go so I can get enough sleep for an early surgery tomorrow.”  I nod to myself.  If it was me, I’d kick her out of the car too.  
  
Usually we come back in and watch a tv show or something and have hot chocolate or cider or whatever.  Not tonight I realize, maybe not ever again.  I suddenly am not so sure about shutting her out.  “Ok.  Thanks for dinner, Callie.  It was good to have a nice time with you again.”  I spit out lamely.  Then I reach for the door.  I’m almost out the door when I feel her hand touch me.  It’s enough and I turn to her halfway in and halfway out of the car.  
  
“Do you miss me at all?”  She whispers.  
  
“Yes, Callie, I do.”  I get out and shut the door.  I can see her vice grip on the steering wheel as she backs out of the driveway.  I go inside.  
  
***  
  
“Was that your Callie?”  Molly asks from the kitchen.  I follow the sound of her voice as I cross the living room and enter the kitchen.  I’m out of body now though and I’m not sure why.  “Are the roses from her as well?”  She prompts.  “Erica?”  
  
I haven’t said anything.  She gets out a second mug and pours steaming water into both.  She gets the tea bags.  I see that it’s Sleepy Time and I smile weakly.  “Erica, you have to tell me what’s going on.  I know that you’re very private and I haven’t been around you in ages so I have no right.  But this isn’t how my Erica behaves.”  There it is again `my Erica.’  It sounds good, my ears ring a little,  but in a good fuzzy way.  
  
I crash into my body at that.  The hamsters are eerily quiet, but my sobs are not.  “I don’t know what I’m doing.”  I sob shout in a weirdly retarded form of speech that I’m not used to.  Molly is beside me in an instant.  I can’t see them in the crush of her warm shoulder and face full of light brown hair, but I know that her green eyes are gentle, probing, searching for answers.  She’s right this isn’t how her Erica behaves, not at all.  But her Erica was braver, more naïve, and less confused.  At that moment, I wanted desperately to be her Erica as I breathed in her perfume and shampoo and whatever.  
  
I slow down my sobs and she pulls back a little those eyes searching mine.  Green seeking out blue, so different than the questioning of brown.  “Come over to the couch.”  She says, and gently pulls and pushes me.  Once I’m seated she leaves me long enough to retrieve our mugs.  “What is going on with Callie?”  She asks out loud making it real.  
  
“So blunt?”  I ask and sob chuckle.  She smiles halfway with me remembering her words to me the other night.  I take in a deep breath though and exhale all of it.  “Callie and I were best friends.  No, we were more than friends, you know?  But then she freaked out and slept with Sloan again.  We hadn’t even figured out what we were yet and she freaked out and turned to him.  I don’t know what I’m doing.  I’ve never been with a woman and yet, it was Callie and it was right and it seemed worth pursuing.  She freaked out on our first date and gave me a whole speech about rules and the motherland and undiscovered country.  I had no idea what she was talking about, but I seemed to calm her down by saying that I didn’t know what was what either and that we’d go slow and figure it out together with no pressure, no rush.  Then a week later she’s in an on-call room with Sloan.  Only she’s telling me it was awful and made her realize that she had to try this with me because she can’t bear to be without me.  And I miss her, but don’t know if I can forgive her or if I want to forgive her.”  
  
“Erica!  Shhhh.”  She’s holding my head to her chest and rocking a little.  I don’t fight it.  I know that my voice was rising up in speed, pitch and volume the whole time that I was talking and that I hadn’t really breathed during the whole telling of it.   “Oh, Erica, it’ll be okay, honey.  I know that this all sucks, but it’s going to be okay.”  She just rocks me for a while and then she releases me, but keeps her hand on my leg.  We drink our tea, but it’s not an uncomfortable silence.  Then she starts, “Erica, I don’t know a lot, but I could have made some guesses.  I know how reserved you are, but if you want to talk about it, I’m here.  You know most of my story by now anyway, so it’s about time that we talked about you, you know?”  
  
I smile at her, my blue penetrating eyes trying to see down into her green.  I want to know what blunder or betrayal lies inside her head.  My suspicion is reflex and as I look at her, into her, I realize that I trust her completely:  there is no blundering or betrayal.  The hamsters notice this and a strange shout goes through my brain.  I’ve never told so much about myself to someone besides my therapist, let alone in one breath like that. “Yeah, I know.”  
  
“So what’s been your story up until now, then?  We can talk about Callie some other time if you’d like.”  
  
I just breathe for a while and she accepts the silence sipping her tea.  There’s an edge here and I feel like I’m going over it.  Although there’s a creeping certainty that I will end up telling Molly everything, so I wonder `Why not now?’  Without looking at her I begin, “There’s not much to tell, Molly.  I powered through the internship and residency and moved out here to be an attending.  I’ve worked my way through the good old boys club and I’ve become number 1 in my field.  What?”  I’ve finally looked at her, and she’s giving me that look, the one that says `Are you stupid?  I know all that already!’  “Oh.”  I reply finally getting it.  “So I didn’t date much, I was too busy and no one caught my eye.  Then it seems that I went and fell in love with Callie.  I had just come to terms with my attraction to her.  In a stupid pissing contest with Mark one night I kissed Callie in the elevator.  Then a day or two later she kissed me in front of the front doors of Seattle Grace.  We avoided each other for a while and then agreed that we’d be scared together because it was too awful being apart.  We finally went on our first date and agreed that kissing was okay and maybe second base.  She was really freaked out and I was just wanting to hang back as much as possible.”  Molly’s kind of staring at me now.  “What?”  I ask her.  
  
“You, you never dated anyone?  After I left?”  
  
It seems that her realization has caught up to me.  I gave away a lot of myself there and didn’t realize.  Callie has me so messed up I didn’t even think to guard my thoughts of Molly.  I mean I’ve come to terms with that a long time ago.  Neither of us could handle the whisper of what we were heading into and so we went our separate ways.  She understood the situation more than I did at the time, I guess.  However I didn’t want her to go away, I didn’t think that could possibly be the right answer.  That’s ancient history though, isn’t it?  “No, I never really dated anyone after you left.  So you know my whole story now in about 5 minutes.”  
  
“Erica, I’m so sorry.  I’m so sorry.  I…”  She trails off.  I don’t have any idea of what to say, but I’ve only heard that tone of voice once from her and it was the day she said goodbye and held my face to hers.  
  
I hug her.  “Don’t be sorry.  What are you sorry for?  I’m the one who took until now to look beyond my work and see that my personal life was a blank slate because I hadn’t been looking in the right direction.”  
  
“I should never have left you.”  I wasn’t prepared for that.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I went on this journey and I traveled far and wide and I looked everywhere for answers.  I left you for no reason.  I have come back to you full circle.  Don’t you see Erica?  We were more than friends too?”  
  
I did see.  I did nothing but see.  What am I supposed to see now?  
  
In my silence she continues, “I had to go find a man to marry.  I had to be `normal.’  I had to be a great doctor on my own, because I knew you’d expect nothing less of me.  I ended up finding happiness in the arms of a woman and realized that was where I had always found happiness.  I had found it in your arms and then I ran away from it.  Don’t you see?  If I had stayed and found out what was with you, then neither of us would have had to hurt the way we did?  You shut down until Callie found you.  I lashed out at the world and made it prove to me what I should have already known.”  
  
“We weren’t dating.  It was a different time.  We were clearly not ready for all of the discoveringness of it all.  I’m barely beginning to think of the possibility of loving a woman and I’m 40.  I couldn’t have even handled five seconds of it then.”  
  
She shakes her head.  “Erica, it wouldn’t have been like what you are trying to do now.  This…”  She trails off trying to find the words.  “Figuring out things the way you are right now—fully aware and conscious, questioning every step and having to reassure yourself and her, it wouldn’t have been like that.  It would have been slow and accidental and easy to fall into.  We would have been solid before we would have had to put a name on it.  And solid?  We would have been able to figure anything out.”  
  
I sigh.  It is a huge relieved, questioning sigh.  “I guess I never thought of all that.  I’m sorry all over again that you left.  How depressing.”  I smirk.  “Thanks for your help.”  I can’t help it, she and I always made the dark twisty little jokes.  Her eyes are hurting for me though.  So I add, “It sounds young and daring and exciting.  A much more interesting story for me all the way around.  But you had a good story yourself and you had to find out on your own.  I’m wondering if that’s what Callie needs to do.  She obviously can’t handle talking to me.”  
  
“So are you broke up?”  What tone is that?  She sounds a little like Dr. Wyatt curious and probing.  There’s something else though.  Eagerness?  
  
“Well, we were never together, but yes, I think we’re broke up.  I mean we barely talk and she seems to be trying, but I have such a block to her.”  
  
“How come exactly?”  
  
“She came out of a dirty on call room and didn’t notice me and then her sex buddy Sloan came out of the same dirty on call room.”  
  
“But what is your block?  You knew she was sleeping with him to try and deny her feelings for you and figure it all out before she finally came to you.  So what was it about this?  The sex really or something else?”  
  
“She quit on me.  She couldn’t handle talking to me and she turned to him again to figure it out.  She should have turned to me.  She didn’t have to sex me up to figure it out, but she could have talked with me more and just tried to figure it out with me first.”  
  
“So your issue is that she didn’t come to you.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“What do you want, Erica?  Can she give it to you?”  
  
***  
  
I wake up on the couch.  I’m vaguely aware of the smell of coffee emanating from the kitchen.  I have a horrible kink in my neck and I groan.  I need a new life.  I need a life where I can go to sleep in my own house in my own bed and not worry about anyone else or anything else.  I can’t do this lack of sleep or messed up sleep anymore.  I’m fed up with it.  I sigh, “It’s going to be a cranky day.  Watch out Seattle Grace.”  I didn’t mean to make a speech to start my day, it’s rather out of character for me, but I’ve been out of character for me for a while now.  I do miss the out of body experiences in a tingly and confused sort of way though.  
  
“Awake, sleepy?”  Molly chirps, actually chirps, from the kitchen and I hear her approach.  Oh yeah, I have a roommate now to hear my random thinking.  Come to think of it, I had a couchmate last night as well.  I turn to look at her and scowl, but the kink in my neck snaps me back so hard I wonder if I’ll give myself a twitch the other direction.  Molly doesn’t seem to have a kink in her neck!  “Here take these.”  She holds out a cup of water and two pills, which I take groaning.  
  
After I down the pills I look up at her, “Why didn’t you wake me up to go to bed?”  There’s frustration in my tone.  If she went to bed, then why the hell did she leave me out here alone.  Why don’t I remember going to sleep?  
  
She snickers, “I just got up silly.  It’s not like I would have left you out here last night.”  I put the heels of my hands against my eyebrows and press hard.  “You were pretty upset in your keeping it together, slightly shocked, and withdrawn way, Erica.  I wouldn’t have left you out here.”  
  
My eyes ask the questions that my mouth can’t.  
  
“You were crying, E.”  She says softly now, no more chirps or twitters.  She sits down next to me but just far enough that she’s incredibly close.  It is odd that I notice this now.  I want to lean into her and have her hold me.  She is holding back just far enough to let me know she’s there, but there’s something else.  “I wish you would talk to me more.  I know that we’ve only just found each other again, but it feels like we were never separated.  I can’t be a truly great friend, unless you tell me where it hurts.”  My breath is shaky and I regard her in a fresh light.  I want to tell her where it hurts, but I don’t even know anymore.  It’s all wrapped into one big bundle of mess.  “There, there.”  She says and it’s all I can do to grab her before the sobs start again.  Her hands on my back and hair, her closeness, her breathing in my ear—it’s so reassuring.  Mesmerizing really.  Then I remember, last night she held me until I collapsed and she lay with me in her arms on the couch.  I must have fallen asleep in her arms and pinned her there.  She pulls back, “Let me call Richard and let him know we’ll be in after lunch.”  I shake my head and she tells me not to be stubborn, that we’re already late as it is and that there’s no way I’m going into surgery right now, let alone go into the messy social halls of the hospital.  I nod my head in acceptance and quiet defeat.  
  
***  
  
At the hospital Molly is immediately swept up with cases that she postponed from the morning.  I find myself uncomfortably un-busy.  The procedures from this morning were routine and basic for cardio.  Richard came down to supervise as Yang handled the surgeries.  I decide to go check in with him about the morning when I see Callie on the walkway.  She is so breathtaking that I can’t stand it.  I almost look to my silent pager, but I know that she’ll see right through me.  We had laughed at all the ways we had tried to avoid each other when we had finally talked again.  From now on she’ll always know that I have no problem faking a page, and I’ll know that if she’s reading a magazine while she’s walking that she’s avoiding someone.  We laughed because we thought we’d never be avoiding each other again.  We laughed because of how absurd it was.  I miss laughing.  I miss laughing with Callie.  
  
“Erica.”  She says it softly as I begin to pass by her.  It sounds like she’s lost some fight and whispers out of some forlorn hope that just won’t die.  It sounds like she doesn’t want to make a scene because she knows that I’ll hate that, but that she wants me to know she’s not gone either.  I get two steps away and I hear her, “Please don’t avoid me again.  I can’t take it.”  
  
I turn and stop to face her.  I can see her face drop as she realizes that I have on no make up and my eyes are still puffy and a little red from crying.  “I’m not.”  I say, almost to myself.  Is it a question for me?  Am I avoiding her?  We had resumed an uneasy friendship, but was I really avoiding her?  
  
“It feels like you are.”  She sighs.  “Are you even trying to forgive me?  Are you trying to let me back in at all?”  Her eyes search mine.  Those pools of deep brown, so gentle and calm now, I wonder where the fire is.  She used to have the smallest flecks of sparkle, or flame in her eyes.  I don’t see that now.  It used to shine for me.  
  
I shake my head just a little.  The air I suck in seems too thick, like it’s not really air I’m breathing, but something more severe and stifling.  Disappointment crashes across her features.  I realize that I shook my head no, but wasn’t answering her question.  I hate all of this and the hamsters in my brain are sleeping, I’m totally alone.  Alone in this brave new world, left to explore on my own and talk to the locals—with no safety word.  I step to her and reach out.  “Don’t misunderstand, Cal.”  She looks up startled.  “I shook my head because this is so overwhelming and unfamiliar and lonely.  I just want to fast forward to where it’s all figured out.  I’m not avoiding you, but I’m not being friendly either.  I need to stop and start being friendly.”  Her pager goes off and I am visibly relieved and so is she.  
  
“Gotta go.”  She says sadly.  I nod and squeeze her arm where my hand had been resting.  Then I turn back toward the chief’s office as she continues up the walkway.


	3. Three

**When To Quit?—Part 3**

 

  
We settle into easy days.  By we I guess I mean Seattle Grace, but really I guess I mean Callie, myself and…  And Molly.  Yes.  Molly is unmistakably part of this equation now.  Zoinks is how I respond to that realization in my head, and then I promptly put in a call to Dr. Wyatt.  
  
“There’s no set schedule.”  I say sitting on Dr. Wyatt’s couch.  “I mean I have lunch with the Chief and Molly to talk about the various reforms that he’s instituting and how it’s going.  We have to figure out if the changes are having any kind of effect in order to evaluate them.  Molly has a lot of ideas since she’s been at more different hospitals than I have.  She’s also a great teacher and has been able to talk to me more about the theory of teaching.  That way I can still pick on the little devils, but also get that softer puppy side of teaching that Richard was asking for.”  I pause and realize that I’ve just talked about the Chief and Molly and changing Seattle Grace first, before anything else going on in my head.  “What?”  I snap a little at Dr. Wyatt.  
  
She chuckles.  “You know what I’m going to say.  You know what I’m going to point out to you and challenge you with.”  She’s right.  We’ve played the game for long enough now.  She knows that I start with work.  Always work first.  Although what I focus on about work changes and reveals various personal entanglements.  Those entanglements are always what I turn to talk about last, but we both know that they are why I’m here.  “Molly.  Callie.”  She says, a little smirk sneaking around the corners of her mouth.  
  
I’m silent.  She continues, “Tell me about Molly.  I’ve haven’t seen you since she started working here.”  
  
“Molly was my best friend in medical school.  She left to do her internship and we lost touch.”  I leave off, sighing.  
  
“Hmm.”  She begins leaning back in her chair.  “I know that.  I know that you even may have had feelings for each other.  We’ve played this game for a while, remember?”  She’s gently prodding me.  She always has to remind me that this is a safe place and that I’ve already stored my secrets here.  “She left because the friendship was at the edge of becoming more.  You were both at the point of realization and you would have had to deal with being romantically involved.  You were crushed when she left.”  She can see me tensing up on the couch.  Even though we both know it is old territory.  “What I want to know is how you are now with her.”  
  
She waits.  I swear I can see her tail twitching like a cat and her eyes are on me like I am the mouse she’s waiting to move so she can pounce.  Normally that would be disturbing to my sense of peace and safety, but there is a thrill to it now.  I am on to something.  It is like being on the edge of a medical breakthrough and it’s new and forbidding, but intriguing and exciting.  It pushes you forward because you can taste the thrill of success or knowledge on the other side.  It’s almost the thrill that I could feel beginning to rise within me when talking to Callie.  But this is better, it’s my own, and I know that I have a protector watching over me.  Dr. Wyatt is not looking at me like a cat waiting to pounce on a poor victim, instead she is like a wolf mother watching as her pups learn to fight and fall and be.  She is intent and watchful, but not waiting to attack, she’s waiting to guide and comfort.  I sigh and cringe.  I sigh at the relief and excitement that I know is beginning.  I cringe at the idea of the word pup; it’s the same word Richard used when scolding me about my treatment of Yang.  Does it all have to be tied together?  
  
She coughs lightly breaking into my thoughts and reminding me to share them.  “I, it’s like we were never apart.”  I smile fully and look down, a little shy all of a sudden.  “She’s staying with me and we have these amazing conversations.  We aren’t beginning a new friendship, but picking up an old one.  She has been on the same journey that I am taking now and it’s such a comfort to know that.  I am only now realizing that I’m a lesbian, and only because I got a push from Callie.  But it’s funny I’ve realized in my time away from Callie, that it isn’t just about her.  I really feel at ease with women, and I’ve always guarded myself because I didn’t want to get close like I did with Molly and have the person disappear.  
  
“She had to go away because she couldn’t deal with it all.  She had to fight against it and figure it out.  She had the cookie cutter life with the beautiful marriage, that wasn’t satisfying.  She found love in the arms of her female attending when she threw herself into her work and sought the comfort of a colleague.  But she had to come to terms with it on her own in her own way.  
  
“I didn’t feel the need to deal with it.  I chose to throw myself into my work and make my career my bedfellow.  It was lonely, but it was safer than getting close again.  I didn’t need to fight against it, because I hadn’t had to name it.  It had stayed just below the surface.  And the cookie cutter life had never appealed to me.  I wanted to be the best in cardio and so I simply clawed my way to the top.”  
  
“Until Callie snuck in?”  
  
“Yes.  Callie snuck in and got close to me.  She knows me almost as well as Molly.  However, she is young and needs to fight herself and work through things.  So after Addision named our relationship for her, she had to name it with me.  She couldn’t just avoid me, only she kind of did, and then she had to come back to see again, and then…”  I trail off.  I haven’t seen Dr. Wyatt in a while.  
  
“She slept with Sloan.”  She says in a whisper as she leans forward reminding me once again that I have placed my secrets here and she has kept them for me.  I am safe.  I lean forward too.  
  
“She didn’t come to me.”  I counter.  Dr. Wyatt raises her eyebrows now and sits straight.  “Molly asked me what my problem was with Callie.  She asked if I knew that she was sleeping with Sloan to figure it out, then why was I upset that she had done it again.  I realized that I wasn’t upset that she had sex with Sloan.  That had never bothered me before.  I mean I didn’t like it, but Callie and I weren’t about sex.  I mean it had crossed my mind that that might be part of where we were headed, but the connection wasn’t about sex.  I was upset that she had gone to someone else.”  
  
“To work things out?  To confide?”  
  
“Both I guess.  I mean we had agreed to be scared together.”  
  
“But she knows that you talk to me?”  
  
“Yes.”  I say slowly.  “But you are my shrink!”  
  
“Who does she go to?  Does she have shrink, as you put it?”  There’s distaste in her tone, and I know I’ve pushed her.    
  
“I just mean that you are eminently qualified to talk about personal entanglements and he’s a lead by example of what not to do when it comes to personal entanglements.”  
  
“But is that who she talks to?”  
  
I glare at her annoyed.  She knows the answer.  We went over this when the issue of privacy and processing came up.  I had to come to terms that Callie needed a sounding board and it couldn’t always be me, when it was about me.  I had come to accept that then, why couldn’t I now?  “We had begun talking about rules for the physical part of our relationship.  We had begun to officially make it a relationship.  I suppose it was still in limbo, not being so easy for us to name exactly since we were scared, but still…  And she didn’t talk to him, she had sex with him!”  I’m angry and Dr. Wyatt leans back with her fingers making a point at her mouth elbows on her knees.  
  
“Did she?  Did she need to figure something out?  Did she have sex with him?  Have you talked to her Erica?  Have you listened?”  She waits, but I know there’s more.  She’s guiding now, the wolf mother has taken the pup by its neck and dragged it off alone for some one on one guidance.  I anxiously rub my hand on the back of my neck.  “She has told you that it was awful, that she pushed him away and cried and yelled at him.  You yourself said that she looked like a mess and he wasn’t happy either.  Was she trying to prove to herself that she liked men, was she trying to prove to herself that she wanted a woman?  She has never had a female companion before.  Addison was her friend for a brief period of time, but it wasn’t like what you had with Molly.  The idea has never occurred to her until now.  She may have tried to sleep with him, but only to prove to herself that she needed to fight to be with you, to re-assure herself that the promise of what you two would have would pull you through.  
  
“So… you need to figure out where you stand with her Erica.  What are you really upset about?  Why did she really do it?  What did she learn from it?  Is that good enough for you?  You left her out of your opening speech today, and I know how you like to save the best for last, so that you can keep it to yourself, keep it private and figure it out.  But she was there loud and clear by you omitting her and putting her to her place.”  
  
I puff loudly.  Its not dignified and she smiles at me.  “Yeah, it’s so easy.  Just answer a few questions and sign here.”  I roll my eyes.  If it was the first time I had ever done this I would be worried that she’d reach across and thump me in the head.  Very wolf mother, I think, a paw on the pup.  A strong lesson with a physical reminder to learn it.  She leans forward, and I know she’s not done.  
  
“How do you define your relationship to Callie, right now.  How would you want to define your relationship to Callie?  Friend.  More than friend.  Girlfriend.  Lover.”  No she isn’t asking me this now?  She knows that I’m barely speaking to her.  Oh, she’s saying more.  Please make it stop.  The hamsters are waking up.  I can feel them starting to struggle towards consciousness and I can already feel the stead drum beat beginning.  “What is your relationship to Molly now?  Are you friends?  More? Girlfriend.  Lover.”  She covers the last two to make a point.  It parallels her question about Callie, but it connects to old feelings that are gone.  
  
She tells me not to answer her now, but to think about it for when I come back.  What is Molly now?  She’s living in my house.  She’s my constant lunch date, only Richard is there.  She’s my instant best friend after all these years.  I haven’t missed Callie as much as I thought I would, should.  Those feelings for Molly are gone.  Are they?  Gone as in evaporated or destroyed, or gone as in carefully put away in a calm quiet safe place that has been almost forgotten?  
  
What do I want from Callie now?  Maybe they didn’t even have sex.  Maybe she tried to get close to him to prove to herself that it wasn’t what she wanted anymore, that she was hungry for something else?  Why else would she continue to harass me?  I’ve been nothing but awful to her for weeks now.  Am I upset that she had to figure it out?  Am I just jealous that she’s so comfortable with Sloan?  
  
The hamsters are in full drum core action and they have been watching videos of Stomp because their banging repertoire has become incredibly vast in variety and rhythm.  And they are scurrying everywhere.  My heart is trying to keep rhythm with the drumming but it gets a little off beat every now and then.  My throat feels like it’s closing.  While I am firmly trapped in my body it’s as though I’m encased in glass and can see people, but not hear them or them hear me.  There’s an invisible barrier trapping me not only in my body, but with my thoughts.  I wish that I hadn’t left Dr. Wyatt’s office.  Why couldn’t she have left me there so I could just sit.  Now I have to go find somewhere to just sit and be and try to be alone.  
  
***  
  
Coffee will probably just agitate the brain hamsters, but they deserve a party don’t they?  They’ve been working hard for a steady set of weeks now.  It’s only fitting that something I think should be calming, might physically be making me even more bonkers.  I go with a hot tea, wishing they had Sleepy Time and that I was able to hide out at Theresa’s house.  I do a lap on the surgical floor and check on a few patients.  I glare at interns and they scurry.  I’m feeling a little better by the time I get to the breezeway that has become a favorite place, but there is a steady drum beat and a repeating chant of Dr. Wyatt’s words: friend, more, girlfriend, lover.  Then the hamster chorus is starting its warm ups with:  fumble, bumble, stumble, mumble, crumble.  Gosh, they are just mean little devil hamsters.  
  
I thought I was feeling better after my shark lap where I took care of business rustled a few interns into action and headed out to the breezeway confident and clear.  However once I came to a stop and had to contemplate the view, the words began.  Callie and I fumble.  We fumble for the right words, the right time, the right amount of sharing, and we drop it.  We bumble along messing up our friendship and our time together and our not-relationship.  We stumble over our own issues and mumble when we try to talk to each other, which is why we crumbled what we had.  
  
My mind goes blank and I just stand there becoming one with the railing over looking the first floor lobby.  A hospital is like an airport, there’s so much hustle and bustle.  People are waiting for loved ones, for life altering news, for their shift to end.  There’s a constant flux of people and just as many happy endings as there are sad ones.  I remember sitting in the airport waiting for my grandparents when they would come to visit.  We would have to get there early to get a parking space and we didn’t know if the plane would be on time until we got there to find out.  I remember that because it is how I feel today.  Stopped and waiting in a place of motion.  It’s weird to think that you can’t wait at the airport like that anymore.  
  
Laughter floats up from the lobby and I absently look down.  Callie and George are talking to a patient and his family.  Even though the teenage boy is in a wheelchair, he is joking with Callie and his family.  She puts her hand out to touch his shoulder.  The memory of that laugh shakes through me and a silent tear lands on my hand.  I’ve propped myself on my elbows on the railing.  I put my tea down on the floor so that I don’t drop it, then I hastily wipe the tear away.  The patient and his family leave and George and Callie talk a moment before heading back to the elevator.  
  
***  
  
I decide that I need to do another shark lap.  Maybe I can find Yang and her interns.  It is funny, now that I don’t have to teach her and she is restricted from being exclusive on my service, I don’t mind her.  I think I minded the instant closeness that she assumed and the suck up way that she pursued me and cardio all the time.  I know that I shouldn’t have treated her the way that I did, but it had become a sick little pleasure of mine and it kept her from being too close to me.  I also am intrigued by the fact that I got scolded for the way that I treated her and yet she treats her interns far worse than I treated her.  
  
That isn’t why I want to find her though.  I want to find her so that I can watch her torture them.  I am too weary to do the actual torturing right now.  Wyatt put me on the rack today and I’m still pulling back into myself.  Yang doesn’t even call her interns by name.  It’s amazing how they hop to what she says though.  I didn’t command my interns attention, respect, or fear when I was a second year resident.  Hmm, it’s something to watch and distract me.  It’s also a little fun to see her work on something besides cardio and then show up with my aura or cardio to tease her.  
  
I turn the corner and there she is at the nurses station, but not an intern in sight.  How disappointing, I think, but wait she’s talking to Molly.  Well, not talking, she’s intently listening and nodding with her head slightly down in a submissive way.  Molly is gorgeous.  Even in the fluorescent light of the hospital, her hair glistens as she moves and her waves move.  She is taller than Callie, but just shy of my height.  She is always dressed a little better than I’ve come to expect from so many of my colleagues.  Is that a neo-natal thing?  I walk up as they are finishing.  
  
“Hey.  How are you?”  Molly greets me with that LED smile.  Then her eyes narrow a little, “Are you ok?”  She asks softly.  
  
“Not really.”  I say, painfully honest, but I have to be her Erica would be nothing less.  “I just have a lot to think about I guess.”  
  
“Yeah.  None of this is easy Erica, but it does get easier.”  She gives my arm a squeeze and she moves past into the hallway.  “I have to go check on Ms. Burges.”  
  
She’s gone.  I continue my shark lap, but it’s pointless now.  I have no bite for the moment.  Friend, more, girlfriend, lover starts up again, but this time the chorus begins with some new warm up words:  trust, certainty, dialogue, laughter, and chemistry.  They are the words of what I want, but they appeared to me after I saw Molly.  They don’t sound good together as a chant, but they fall into a steady rhythm.  I want trust and certainty, which I lack with Callie and am beginning to feel with Molly.  I struggle with, but know that dialogue is important and Molly find this easier to manage than Callie and I.  Laughter comes naturally from a never ending well with Molly, with Callie it is strangled by the hurts we’ve caused it.  Chemistry?  Hmm.  Well, you don’t just touch anyone’s arms, shoulders, hands, cheeks, knees and legs do you?  Callie and I did, but it was crazy speech inducing and thrilling.  Molly and I do, but it is light and natural as if we had always been like that and always will be like that.  Those touches are still there though and I can’t deny that now.  
  
What was Wyatt’s question?  How do I define or want to define my relationship with each one?  Friend, more, girlfriend, or lover.  I’m still doing laps when Molly comes back from her consult.  She tells me to go lay down or something because I must be having a bad day.  I should be offended that she’s saying I look like shit, but I’m relieved that she tells me what to do.  It stops me from the mindless roaming that I’ve been doing and makes me focus on finding a place to lay down.  
  
***  
  
I’m in an on call room laying on the top bunk and staring at the ceiling tiles.  I feel totally useless.  I came in to work today and let Dr. Wyatt beat me up and I don’t even have a surgery to help me re-focus.  Yang is handling patient follow up and I have nothing to do.  Well, nothing that I have to do.  It’s a rare day and I should enjoy it more or go to the gallery, but I’m here with my thoughts and Dr. Wyatt’s questions.  
  
Callie comes in and I turn to see her.  Our eyes meet.  She holds my gaze a moment and then begins to back out of the room.  “Cal.”  I call to her.  “You can come in, if you want.”  My tone is as gentle as my eyes were, but I am sure that is alarming as well.  I’ve given her little but the glares of the Ice Queen lately. She returns however, resigned, but determined to fight through it all.  “Can I ask you something?”  I say turning to lay on my stomach and looking at her.  We are at the same height with her standing and me on the top bunk.  She leans against the door opposite me.  I’m not sure if she stays there so she has an escape route or not.  
  
“How.”  I stop and try to find the right words.  She’s biting her bottom lip, her eyes searching mine.  She’s trying to gauge how much pain I’m going to inflict.  “How can you freak out about second base and vague unexplored country that we promised not to rush into and want a safe word?  
  
“Do you even know what that is Callie?  Do you even know what a safe word implies you are even considering doing?  
  
“Clearly you’re confused.  Confused about everything.  I don’t want limits and fear and rules.  I want to explore together without limitations because there is trust and no fear.  You want me to be re-assuring while you freak out and yet turn off my own feelings when you try to figure it out with Sloan or some guy or who knows who and not me.  
  
“I have my own fears inside my head, but I work through them and knowing I had someone who was experiencing the same fears made it ok.  It was ok because I knew we could each see the same problems and have two minds about how to solve it together.  It’s like approaching a new surgery and having two minds that have the same fears, but each have a wealth of knowledge and other experience to go on, so that it’s less scary and the combined knowledge will lead to success.  
  
“And that success, Callie?  It’s so much cooler to share with someone who had the same struggle.  Look at the closeness that came out of your frozen man surgery.  It made you all warm and fuzzy with Bailey and Sheppard and you finally found the courage to thaw out and talk to me again.”  
  
 I stop, mulling my own words over in my head.  
  
She’s still processing.  In fact she’s closed her eyes.  “I never thought you were going to talk to me again, Erica.”  Her tone is so plaintive, filled with weeks of longing, of loss.  I was lost to her.  I know how that feels to have your `friend’ disappear.  It’s what Molly did to me all those years ago.  I know that pain.  I shut down for what 15 years?  However, I realize I didn’t disappear like Molly and actually go away.  Instead I was a ghost of myself right in her face everyday and still lost to her.  
  
***  
  
It’s so easy.  Lunches with Molly, and sometimes Richard, naturally alternate with lunches with Callie.  It’s like the universe wants it to be a little bit easier for now.  The schedules and surgeries ebb and flow so that there is never an awkward choice and it’s pretty balanced.  In fact it’s so easy that sometimes Callie joins us for lunch, but only when Derek or Miranda has also joined.  It’s not tense or awkward though.  It is just lunch, although it’s not.  It’s close giggling and incomplete sentences that are finished for each other, but not even said outloud and renewed giggling.  It’s catching each other looking longer than normal, but not too long.  It’s smiling in return.  It’s getting caught looking myself.  
  
Callie again, but also Molly.  I’m not even surprised.  It would have been silly to be surprised I suppose.  Callie is more than friends.  I mean we have been carrying on like dueling lovers and brooding over a not break up.  Yeah, that constitutes as more than friends no matter whether we were speaking or not.  Molly?  Well, we know each other by heart and the heart is still true after all these years.  We are basically living together, and we are just too tender.  Definitely more than friends.  Such a delicate balance, it is like cutting with a scalpel—only deep enough open the chest cavity and shallow enough that you haven’t sliced into the delicate bits.  More than friends, but not dating—it is like the thrill before the first cut and sometimes you want that moment to last and you pause before the surgery breathing in deep relishing it before it is gone and the hard work begins.  
  
They don’t even seem to notice the other.  I’m sure that they do, but there’s no awkward.  No rolling of the eyes if I say that I have dinner plans with the other.  No trying to steal time or interrupt conversations.  I have dinner and late nights with Callie as often as I have them with Molly.  Drinking, dancing, sunrise yoga those are Callie time.  Movies, card games and soccer those are Molly time.  Until one night when Callie comes to pick me up and she sees Molly’s car in the drive.  I’m not ready I explain and ask if she can wait just a few minutes because I was talking to Molly and lost track of the time.  
  
Callie is fuming by the time I get back to the kitchen where there has been some uncomfortable waiting and poor small talk going on.  Molly is at home in my kitchen and busy making dinner and obviously in comfortable clothes.  Callie is physically unhappy and staring at Molly in her tank top and pajama style capris.  “Let’s go.”  I say ending the episode.  “Molly, it will be all right.  They’ll call you when they have information for you.  I won’t be out too late.”  Callie huffs off and leaves the front door open.  Molly nods at me and though her eyes are sad, she smiles full of mischief.  
  
“Don’t worry about me.”  She says, “you have your own problem to worry about.”  She looks toward the door after the Bone Crushing Latina that has just stormed out.  
  
“So does she just live with you now?!”  Callie starts in the moment I close the door.  She backs out and sqeals the tires as we hit the road.  
  
“What?”  I stammer.  “She’s looking for a place, Callie.  You know how it is, with work and availability and finding something that you like.  She’s trying to decide whether to rent or buy.  And with the economy.”  
  
“She’s with you more than I even have the chance to be.”  She says flatly.  “You couldn’t even be on time for me tonight because you were talking to her.  And you knew I was coming to get you!”  
  
“Oh.  Callie, I’m so sorry.  Molly got some bad news tonight.  I needed to let her tell me.  Her ex-lover is in the hospital, but she doesn’t know how bad it is right now.  The uncertainty is killing her.  You know a doctor knowing so much and not being able to know or do anything for someone you love.  I mean we’ve all been there.  The wait is unbearable and you analyze everything you’ve said to that person…”  I’m babbling on until Callie stops at a red light and turns to me.  
  
“Her what?  Her ex what?  Lover?  She’s gay!  And living with you!  What the hell Erica!”  
  
“Oh.”  I can almost hear the light bulb go on in my own head.  She seemed jealous earlier and now I’ve just confirmed that Molly is staying there with no immediate plan of moving out, AND she’s into girls.  “Yes.  Uh.  She was with a woman during her residency.  Uh, erm, yes, well, it ended her marriage.”  I breathe and look at her.  The light has turned green, but she’s not moving.  She’s staring at me.  “And she’s not living with me.  She’s looking for a place.”  Still not moving.  “Callie.  The light.  The light is green.”  I say no more than a whisper.

 

 


	4. Four

_**When To Quit?—Part 4** _   


 

A couple of days go by.  Callie and I finished our `date’ I guess, but it was strained.  Obviously she is not okay with how close Molly and I are and that Molly has been with a woman before.  We haven’t had to actively avoid each other, but we haven’t come into contact either.  I’m early and standing on the breezeway near the chief’s office.  I am sad and happy and early.  It’s a nice place to relax and just breathe.  The hospital has a different feel to it in the early morning.  Traumas from the previous night have mostly settled into whatever holding pattern they are in, and the new day’s appointments and bustle haven’t begun.  I see Callie down below.  She looks up and I know we are done avoiding each other for now.  
  
When she joins me on the breezeway, she has brought coffee.  It’s such a nice gesture and a warmth for Callie washes over me.  I smile at her, inviting and happy.  “You’re here early.”  She states.  
  
“Yeah.  I had to drop Molly off at the airport.  She has to go back to help make arrangements.”  
  
“Oh, so she never got good news, then?”  Callie’s tone is genuinely sad.  Her eyes are shining and I am wondering if she’s asking me if there will be good news for us.  I don’t have an update for her though and so I stick with the surface conversation.  
  
“No, it was a car crash and there was too much internal bleeding they couldn’t catch it all in time.  Her injuries were just everywhere.  They thought they solved one problem and then found another.  Molly is pretty devastated.”  
  
“I’m sorry for Dr. Gutierrez’ loss.”  She says formally.  That’s my fault.  I made sure that Callie knew her place around Molly.  I was so mad at her.  We could have all been such good friends.  It’s a shame.  They would have gotten each other.  And there it is again.  Who are they to me and why can’t they be friends after all?  They are each my best friend and they should so be good friends with each other by default.  
  
“Thanks.  I know you’re not friends with Molly, but that’s nice.”  I pause.  I need to talk to her.  I need to talk to Callie.  We were beginning to get along so well.  It was almost like we were close again.  And then not.  Are we doomed to this back and forth I wonder.  She frowns at my words or at my overly long pause.  I’m not sure which.  “Cal, have you been avoiding me?”  
  
“No.”  She says uncertainly and I look at her very sternly.  “I mean I haven’t.  I haven’t been avoiding you, but I do have to say I’ve enjoyed not avoiding you these past few days.”  She elbows me in the ribs and I flinch enough to spill coffee on my hand.  We both laugh.  Is this getting easier or is it just me?  After an easy moment I hear Callie suck in her breath.  She’s going to ask something that she’s been puzzling over.  It makes me smile to know her so well.  “Are you.  Are you with her?  I just.  I need to know Erica.  I need to know because you are killing me.  I need to know how bad this is.  Please.”  
  
Hurt.  Pure unadulterated pain.  She’s been breathing it in and out like a chant for days.  She doesn’t hide it from me.  Instead she shows it to me and asks for confirmation or denial.  I instinctively reach for her comforting.  “No.  We.  We’re not together.  We are friends.  We are confidants.  We are not together though.”  
  
“I just needed to know.  Erica.  I want to be your friend.  But I want so much more than that.  I need you Erica.  I need to figure things out.  If you’re just friends with me and you’re with her.  I need you to tell me.  Please.  You’ll tell me.  I can’t do this again.  I fought so hard for George.  I fought him.  I fought his friends.  I fought myself.  And he lied to my face after he was with his friend.  I can’t do this again.”  
  
“Oh, Callie.  I never wanted you to have to re-live that again.  I never wanted to put you in that position of doubt.  But I have.  Molly and I are not dating and we never did date.  You do need to know that fifteen years ago there was a glimmer of that though.  I don’t ever want to lie to you.  I don’t know what we are, you and I.  But Molly and I are friends.”  
  
She’s satisfied.  She leans into me and sighs heavily.  We’re shoulder to shoulder in a thoughtful pause until both of our pagers go off.  Dr. Wyatt’s words echo in my ears again.  And I still don’t have any answers.  I told the truth though—I am not dating either one of them.  
  
***  
  
Crazy stuff doesn’t happen to me.  Really it doesn’t.  I mean I wait until I’m 40 to figure out what I could have figured out when I was 26, but I’m a late bloomer, not a crazy magnet.  And I like to think that I was just a late bloomer since I wasn’t inspired properly early on.  Who knows if I had gone to med school with Angelina Jolie, maybe I would have found a way to make the big jump.  I don’t really think so because I wouldn’t trade Molly’s green eyes for anything.  But crazy does seem to happen at Seattle Grace, and I can at least blame that for my recent run of crazy.  
  
I mean really, who has an almost relationship blow up in her face, only to be further confused by the only other almost relationship she ever had in 24 years coming back.  No wonder they all say seriously around here too much.  I mean a guy fell off a building and a pigeon saved O’Malley’s life?  Stevens resuscitated a deer?  Yang insulted Grey’s relationship and got an icicle through her abdomen?  And Grey, really the unknown wife of the guy you are dating shows up and starts working with you?  
  
Crazy is definitely here.  The walls of Seattle Grace positively ooze with crazy.  I didn’t have crazy until I came here.  But that doesn’t change the fact that I am here, which means I’m with crazy.  The ceiling fell on my surgery several weeks ago and there has been quite the clean up going on.  I find myself walking down halls and practically tripping over workers and buckets of equipment and debris.  I think the Chief has decided to re-model while he’s fixing up the joint.  Why the heck else would this clean up take so long?  
  
At any rate I find myself on the ground.  Apparently I finally tripped on one of the cords to a machine.  Callie and Karev who were at the nurses’ station come to my rescue, but when they start to pull me up I yank away squealing in pain.  Callie drops to one knee and her face is so close to mine that I can’t think straight.  “What hurts?”  She breathes into my ear, her hand on my shoulder.  
  
“My ankle or foot.  I don’t know.  I didn’t realize until I tried to stand with you.”  Instinctively I raise my legs to my chest hugging them.  Her face is full of concern.  Her brown eyes digging deep into my blue ones.  
  
“Karev, go get a wheel chair.”  She orders.  Then to me, “I’ll get some ice for you and then we’ll take some x-rays.”  I’m still hugging my legs to me.  It hurts and I don’t like pain.  I’m glad that she’s there with me though.  
  
They get me into the wheel chair, but not without some embarrassing squealing on my part.  I tell Karev to keep his mouth shut, when I see the little smirk start to form on his lips.  Callie glares at him and his eyes widen, but he stays silent.  She tells him she’s got it from here and he leaves immediately shaking his head.  She’s pushing the wheelchair, but she bends over to talk to me from time to time her mouth in the hair over my ear.  We detour for ice and then head down to x-ray.  She promises to give me something for the pain after we know what we’re dealing with.  
  
The x-rays do not show a break.  However the swelling and the feel under her hands as she examines me reveals it is a severe sprain.  You’d think I could walk down the hallway without a severe injury.  It’s maddening.  I could’ve been doing something so much more worthy of the story and I was just walking down the hall.  She kneels down in front of the wheelchair and rubs the tears off my cheek with the thumb of her hand her fingertips resting on either side of my face.  
  
I close my eyes and swallow.  I’m trying to regain control, but I haven’t been in control since I met Callie, so it’s a lost skill to me.  I know it’s there, I just can’t recall its finer points.  I open my eyes and see hers peering at me.  I’m relieved to have her there, to know she’ll take care of me in this instant.  
  
I swallow again and lean forward just a little.  I know I didn’t go far enough to reach her, but her lips brush again mine.  It’s tentative.  Then her hands pull me toward her even more and she controls my mouth hungrily exploring, claiming.  My hands weave into her hair and I kiss her back with all the relief and thanks I have in me.  I am so glad she was there to take care of me.  
  
“Ahem.”  There’s coughing.  Why is there coughing?  I’m not coughing.  Callie’s not coughing.  Gasping.  Gasping for air maybe, but not coughing.  We break apart and look to the doorway where there is a very shocked Miranda Bailey.  Who apparently needs the x-ray room and now by the looks of it.   
  
“Bailey.  Just leaving.”  Callie addresses Bailey in a rush, and then to me, “Let’s get you some medicine and a brace.”  And she pushes me from the room.  
  
***  
  
“Hello?”  
  
“Erica, hey this is Molly.  How are you?”  
  
“Uh.  Molly.  I’m fine, I guess.  When are you coming back?  I’ve been worried about you.”  I hope that she can’t see through my façade just now.  I need some more time on my own and away from Callie and Molly if at all possible.  After the ankle and kiss incident I went home to rest.  Actually Callie drove me home because I sprained my right ankle and shouldn’t drive.  To top my invalid status off, Karev drove her car and she drove me in mine.  Then he waited outside while Callie settled me into bed with an ice pack, an overwhelming stack of pillows and a book.  She lingered over goodbye and I was so full of want that I couldn’t stand it.  She seemed torn as well, until Karev started honking his horn outside.  
  
I’m home alone with my foot propped up on my bed and the tv so low I can’t hear it and my crack whore hamsters are running amok in my brain again.  I think the pain medication is making them a little loopy too, because they are singing some crazy songs about the kiss with Callie and how much I’ve missed Molly.  I dreamed crazy hamster dreams where I kissed Callie, but when I pulled back it was Molly’s eyes gazing into mine.  Then I dreamed that Molly and I were playing darts that time she shared her secrets with me and we fell asleep on the couch, only in the dream when I awoke it was Callie and there was no freak out.  The phone ringing only shifted the confused Callie/Molly mixture into reality.  
  
“I’m fine. Erica, you knew that this was unpleasant news, but that this part of my life was over before anyway.  You don’t sound right in any case.  I think I could sense something, that’s why I called.”  
  
“You could not sense anything from there!”  I protest, but she’s never been wrong before and she knows it.  
  
“What happened today?  I don’t hear hospital noises in the back ground, where are you?”  She almost makes it sound naughty and I hate to burst her bubble.  
  
“I went home early and I have tomorrow off too.”  
  
“What Erica Hanh taking time off?  Did hell freeze over there?  It hasn’t reached us here yet, but thanks for the warning!”  She teases and I smile again.  
  
“You know all the flood and construction and stuff?  Well it’s still going on.  I swear I wish I knew what Richard was up to.  It’s taking so long.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, get to the point, honey.”  
  
My breathing catches. I don’t know why, but this time it catches in my brain.   She used to always call me that, and she’s fallen into it again since her arrival at Seattle Grace.  It’s just that today I’ve been dreaming of her and today I am lonely and today I’m a little loopy because of the kiss with Callie and a little pain medicine.  “Honey?”  I ask before I can even think.  
  
“Yeah, that’s what I always call you.”  
  
“It’s just odd sometimes.  It reminds me of med school.”  
  
“It felt right, do you want me to stick with Erica?”  
  
“No.  I like honey.”  It’s a definite click sliding into place, a missing piece put back, but I can’t quite make out the picture that is the puzzle being put together.  I felt a click this afternoon of a missing piece put back, but it was Callie’s lips on mine.  
  
“Erica?”  
  
“Oh, yeah.  So I fell on some construction clean up type stuff and managed to sprain my ankle.”  I sigh more than I had intended.  I don’t want to tell her about Callie.  I don’t know why.  She knows about Callie and she knows I’m trying to figure it all out, but somehow I feel torn.  That kiss doesn’t mean we’re okay now.  And my reluctance tells me that I’m not going to be okay with Molly being upset that I kissed Callie.  The next puzzle piece that clicks for me is that Molly and I are not dating.  We’re not dating, except we kind of are, because I don’t want to tell her about Callie.  And because I can’t wait for her to come home.  Well home to my home where she’s staying for now.  Wow, lots and lots of puzzle pieces and I still don’t know what picture I am trying to build.  
  
“What else, Erica.  You know I know that’s not it.”  
  
“Callie and I kissed.  Well I kissed Callie or she kissed me.”  I’m stammering over myself.  I have to tell her though, it’s what I would expect I realize.  It’s what Callie didn’t give me.  “I mean I was so relieved that she was there to help me and she was wiping the tears off my face, and she was so gentle and full of care.”  I’m crying now.  
  
“Erica, it’s okay.  Breathe.  This was bound to happen and you know it.  Have you come any closer to some answers Erica?  Do you know what you want and whether she can give it to you?  Maybe you need to talk with her now.”  There’s something in Molly’s voice.  It’s strained and I half smile.  She’s doing the friend thing and looking out for me and encouraging me, but she’s strained at the effort it’s taking.  Maybe she feels torn as well?  Torn between wanting me and wanting me to be happy, even if it’s with Callie?  
  
We get off the phone quickly after that.  Holy moly.  Are the hamsters channeling some kind of oracle or something today?  Where did that come from?  I don’t want Molly, do I?  Honey.  Oh, it was so sweet in her voice, just like all those days ago.  And it does feel like days ago instead of years.  What a happy time then.  To be younger and more clueless.  
  
***  
  
After a week of Theresa checking on me, laying around with my ankle propped up and watching re-runs of the MythBusters, CSI Anywhere, and movies I didn’t remember liking, but that had now taken on a strange significance—I am leaving the compound.  I feel like I am sneaking out of the house at age 14 or something.  I think I’ve been alone with the hamsters too much and they have sensed all of my fears and made up little skits to act out in my head.   
  
I have to wear socks tall enough to go up over the brace, and shoes that I can fit the brace and my shoe into.  Lacing the brace takes time that I don’t normally spend getting ready and it is frustrating.  I like to get up at the last possible moment so that I can enjoy the feel of the covers and pretend that I am safe inside a little bit before I face the world.  When I do get up, it is with a purpose and I am ready in 15 minutes flat.  I have a very ordered routine and mental checklist so I can relish those extra minutes in bed.  I do not like having to come into the living room with my socks and shoes to stop everything and lace up a stupid brace.  
  
With the cane I must look the ultimate picture of Attila the Hanh as I walk into the hospital.  At least it didn’t impair my driving and it hasn’t slowed my walk down too much either.   Maybe I can really have a go at the interns now that I have a weapon to brandish.  Hmm.  Maybe there will be something positive to this afterall.  I’m not supposed to be at work, but I can’t help but stop to look at the charts of the cardio patients to see what has been going on while I’ve been gone.  I told Richard that I didn’t need to be off work this long, but he wouldn’t hear of it.  I even offered to be in a wheelchair as much as possible and he said not a chance.  I think he feels guilty that his head of cardiothoracics not only had the ceiling crash down on her head during a surgery, but then his slow clean up of debris and damage may have cost me my ankle.  He’s over-willing to have me take time off and it makes me a little happy to have him squirm.  Maybe he would build a new cardiac ward to expand the program?  It would dove tail nicely with his reform movements to help move Seattle Grace back into the top rankings.  What the heck am I thinking?  I really have been alone too long when I am getting annoyed at my own rambling.  I shake my head and focus on the chart in front of me.  
  
Her arm brushes solidly against mine from the top of her shoulder down to her elbow and even along the forearm and I close my eyes.  I let that one sensation take over in my mind.  I have been starving and now I realize that I needed to drink her in.  She smells fresh and clean and I lean into her in return.  “Hey there.”  She says gently and I finally open my eyes and turn to look at her.  Her eyes are so deep and searching that I don’t respond.  Her voice was gentle and her face is caring and her touch along my arm is amazing.  “You are not allowed to be back at work until I sign off on you!”  She scolds and takes the chart out of my hand and puts it on the counter.  Then she takes my hand and wraps it around her arm to steady me in place of my cane.  
  
“Hey, I need my cane.”  I start to protest, but she drags me down the hall.  “The, Callie, the chart doesn’t go there.  What if Yang can’t find it?  I need my cane, Callie.”  I am complaining, but slowly giving into Callie as she pulls me one step at a time away from the nurse’s station.   
  
“You are too much.  I don’t see you for a week and hardly talk to you and you’re worried about a cane in a hospital and a chart that is clearly on the nurses’ counter.”  She sighs out a frustrated puff of air.  I used to tease her about that—I called that her dragon puff.  I used to tell her that she was a dragon, but not a big scary one, just a little feisty red one with maroon streaks that could fly and cause trouble and set things on fire.   
  
“Puffy.”  I say dryly.  
  
“That’s better.” She smiles brightly, holding my arm on hers with her other hand.  Really it’s quite intimate, we have to walk slowly because of my ankle and because I’m using her as my cane we have to walk very closely together.  I wish we had more of these moments now that I think about it, maybe my week’s worth of daydreams would have been better filled if we had had more memories like this one.   
  
We go down to X-ray together and she takes the images she needs to double check my ankle.  There has been consistent swelling and she wants to make sure that she didn’t miss a break.  Her fingers linger on my ankle as she positions it and I look up at her.  She is smiling playfully.  “Callie?”  I question her, with a hint of warning.  I know what she’s thinking and I am gearing up to block the situation.  
  
“What?”  She says innocently and leaves the room to take the image.  “Let’s see what there is to see Erica.”  
  
“Callie.”  I begin, but I have no ending in my brain.  It’s as if I just wanted to say her name.  Maybe I just wanted to see her turn to face me, which she does.  She gazes into my blue eyes with her brown ones and she’s thoughtful.  She’s not teasing, or searching or sad.  My heart pangs a little because I wonder if she’s let me go then.  
  
“Too bad Bailey came in the last time.”  She smiles widely at me and again grabs my arm nesting it in her own and helps me to stand and walk with her.  
  
***  
  
The x-rays do not show a break and I am relieved.  Wearing a cast for 6 weeks was not something I was looking for.  Callie took a look and said that the swelling was less than it had been, but that I wasn’t ready to come back to work yet.  My face is defeated and she takes pity on me.  “We can go to lunch if you’d like.  I can understand wanting to get back here Erica, but once you’re back it’s not really all that.”  
  
“I know.  It’s just that…”  I trail off still unsure.  How am I supposed to be sure?  “It’s just a lot of time alone, you know?”  
  
I’m sitting on the patient counter and my legs are dangling.  I hate it and feel vulnerable sitting there.  I guess that I’m glad I’m not in a hospital gown or anything.  Callie moves to stand in front of me and she is in between my legs and I instinctively squeeze my legs on either side of her.  She has her hand on my cheek and her eyes are staring deep into mine.  “It doesn’t have to be that way, you know?”  
  
I close my eyes and nod.  How am I to be sure of what Callie can give me, if I don’t find out with her?  “Callie, you hurt me when you couldn’t come to me and had to go to someone else for answers and clarification.  I’ve heard you and I think I even accept that was what you did—clarify.  But I need you to come to me instead of someone else.  I can’t have him as part of my relationship with you.  It’s hard enough for me to make friends and to try to do this, I can’t have you going to someone else.”  
  
“I’m so sorry Erica.  I never wanted to hurt you.  I wanted to understand what I felt for you and I had to know that I didn’t want him.  I can’t believe how stupid I am to not think it through and consider what it would do to you and to my possible relationship with you.”  She looks so sad standing so close to me and her arm is now resting on my shoulder with her fingers occasionally pulling at my hair a little.  
  
“I don’t know if you can give me what I want, Callie.”  
  
“I would like the chance to find out.”  She says in a serious whisper.  
  
“Ok.”  I say and she kisses me slowly.  
  
We pull apart like our first kiss and look in each other’s eyes and find recognition there and smile before kissing again.  We kiss and it’s not about dominating each other or proving anything, but it is a swirling dance with no beginning and no leader, but joyous motion as our mouths open and tongues slide together.  My moan becomes her moan as I hold her closer to me and her standing body is crushed against my sitting one.  
  
“So, lunch?” She pulls back and asks me playfully.  “I do have to work sometime today.”  We share a bright smile full of promise.  My heart skips a beat.  
  
“Callie, oh, I mean, Dr. Torres.  Hello Dr. Hahn.  I thought this was, uhm, one of your patient’s, you know.  I don’t know.”  Karev halfway came in holding the cane and he is already backing back out of the door.  She leaves me crossing over to him in a shot and takes the cane.  
  
“Thanks Karev.”  He leaves and she gives me a look I can’t quite understand.  
  
***  
  
Molly hugs me tightly on the sidewalk of the airport.  She kisses my cheek like it is something that we’ve always done.  My heart accepts it as part of the way the world should be.  Her hug is solid and there’s no holding back despite the public place and possibility that I don’t want a full hug.  She doesn’t ask and she doesn’t hesitate.  Her green eyes find mine and smile even though her mouth doesn’t.  “Hey.”  I say shyly and take her bag to put it in the trunk.   
  
“Hey yourself, honey.”  She says warmly.  She looks beat.  I guess that burying the past takes a lot out of you, even if you were already done with it.  Molly said that she was older than us, but she was still too young to die and it is sad to realize that someone who was so important to you is gone, no matter how far apart they’ve drifted.  It’s like a distant light has gone out somewhere and even though it wasn’t a light that reached you and was part of your working life, you always knew it was out there if you looked far enough into the distance.  
     
The closest I can come to it would be like losing Molly before she had come back into my life, and my breathing catches.  I am not ready for that possibility, and the cold air that I suck in hurts my lungs.  I always knew that Molly was out there and I knew that she had to be successful and I hoped that she was happy.  I knew that she would see me in the distance the same way I saw her—an article posted in a journal with a new photograph, or my name mentioned with a procedure.  
     
“How are you?”  I ask, knowing that I am about to settle into my thoughts silently and that’s not fair to her.  What have she and I been flirting with since she came to Seattle Grace?  Will she be able to be close to me when I tell her that I choose Callie?  Have we already gone too far for that?  I have to know what Callie and I have, though.  I can’t fight that anymore.  
  
“Oh.  Traveling takes a lot out of me, you know how much I hate it and then there were the actual events of the past week, so you know…” She leaves off sighing.  “But it’s good to think that I’m back home.”  She says turning to me now her green eyes sparkling at mine as we pause at the traffic light.  
  
Home.  Shit, I like how that sounds.  Maybe I’m the one that shouldn’t be trusted? Hamster hula anyone?  I think as I pull forward and head home with Molly.  
  
***

“What’s wrong with you?”  
  
I lean forward itching my face and say into my hand, “Brain hamster.”  
  
“Eh.  What?”  
  
“Brain tumor?”  I twist.  
  
“Erica, you’ve been not-watching tv for the last hour.  And you drove me home from the airport in a thoughtful little bubble.  I know it’s not a brain tumor and so do you.  So spill it.”  
  
“Ouch.  You really know how to burst that bubble don’t you?”  I’m trying to avoid it, talking to her, but it needs to happen.  I feel like when I try to engage Dr. Wyatt in my word games.  
  
She smiles at me.  This time I think of a fellow wolf pup waiting for its litter-mate to be caught unawares and then it pounces.  This could be a good playful pounce, or it could be a serious I’m gonna kick your ass pounce…  Maybe both?  I didn’t have a brother or sister, but her look resembles that of a devilish little sister that a friend of mine from high school had.  There will be no word games tonight.  
  
“Erica, I know that it’s complicated.  Life is.  You are at a point where it’s really complicated.  More change is happening to you right now than has gone on in a long time and you are having to re-evaluate everything.”  
  
I look to her.  Her green eyes are shining brightly, but she is relaxed and caring and determined.  “There’s just a lot and being home alone hasn’t made it any better.”  Maybe not a fellow pup out to torture me, maybe she’s one of those extra adults in the wolf pack?  Maybe she’s got some advice for the new litter?  
  
“You have been so alone this whole time, Erica.”  
  
“But you’ve been here.”  I start to protest, but she cuts me off.  
  
“No, Erica.  I’ve been part of the problem.  Just listen a moment.  If I go totally off the mark, you can stop me.  But let me take a shot at this.  You were alone until you met Callie.  Then you were alone because Callie freaked out and… well, let’s not get into that.  But you were alone.  You weren’t finished with Callie, but you were still alone trying to process the floodgates of emotion and information that she unleashed.”  
  
“I’ll say.”  I agree and the hamsters give a short `woot’.  
  
“Then while that was going on I showed up.  If there was ever a worse time for me to show up, then I don’t know what it would be.  I’d rather not find out.  So I show up and we resume the closeness that we once had without ever discussing it or agreeing to it or defining it.  We were never done with each other and for it to come so easy for us to resume, well that’s awful hard to resist.  We never defined anything then and we never defined anything now, but there is something.”  She pauses.  This is hard for her I can see, but she is not afraid of it, or unsure, no she is confident and careful.  “I live with you and we have an undefined something.”  
  
“You just needed a place to stay, it’s not like—”  
  
“I live with you and we have an undefined something.”  Her eyes scold me for interrupting.  I am making this harder for her and it’s painful.  She’s confident, but this is painful.  She swallows, “But Callie is still here and you’re not done with her.  She’s definitely not done with you.”  She shakes her head sadly.  “Erica you are even more alone now than you were before.  You can’t talk to her at all really.  She won’t really let you talk to her about her, but you especially can’t talk to her about me.  You can’t talk to me, because that would mean defining what is between us, which we have very carefully avoided.  And you can’t talk to me about Callie because you don’t know where you stand with me.”  
  
I misunderstood the hamsters’ silence over the last few days—they were not gone.  They were getting more crack and preparing to have a full out Cirque du Soleil production inside the hallowed halls that once were my brain.  “Wow.”  I say.  “You don’t play poker do you?”  
  
Molly smiles and her whole face lights up.  There’s a sad shine to her eyes, but she still sends me wishes for happiness.  She is gentle and she leans her head onto my shoulder on the couch.  “Not with you I wouldn’t.”  I wonder if she means that she won’t bluff, hold secrets back or gamble with me.  I settle with she won’t play games when talking to me about matters of the heart.  
  
“Thank you.  That would’ve taken me much longer to get out of my head.”  
  
She sighs into my shoulder and wraps her arms around me tightly.  “I know.”  
  
We sit for a long moment in a comfortable silence soaking in the conversation.  After a while she pulls away from me and shifts so that she is sitting sideways on the couch as I lean back.  Her eyes are gazing into mine as she considers things.  I hold my breath as I lick my lips.  My body is waiting for it.  It wants it her to lean forward and close the gap.  Her green eyes disappear for a long moment, but she doesn’t move.  She opens them and shakes her head imperceptibly.  “Let’s pretend that we don’t know that we’re in love with each other.”  She says.  “Let’s pretend that this won’t hurt.”  
  
I’m stunned and silent.  A hamster fell off the spinning wheel of death.  “But.”  I start and stop, the word falling out of my mouth with no other words to come to its rescue.  
  
“No.”  She takes a giant lungful of air, using all her strength to breathe.  “You need to follow this path, honey.  You are miserable without her and happy with her.  I am not going anywhere.  I just got you back in my life so I want to keep you as part of it and to know that you are happy.”  She nods as if she is checking off things that she needs to say, making points that she knows I need to hear.  “All of that being said.  I want to be very clear that if you tell me to stop pretending and start looking at you, then I will.”  Her eyes lock onto mine to communicate her clarity straight from inside her brain through my blue eyes and straight into my brain.  She doesn’t waver or blink and my heart breaks.  It breaks for her, it breaks for what we never gave a chance to, and it breaks for me.  
  
“And I thought you never played poker!  You just laid down a Royal Flush to clean out the house.”  She gives me a good hard slap on the leg and I rub where she hit me in pain.  
  
“Why do I bother with you?”  She says getting up and walking down the hall.  “You know I need to move out now, right?”  
  
“Molly.”  I whine.  “Why does this have to be like this?”  
  
“Because we didn’t see it through the first time.”

 

 

 


	5. Five

**When to Quit—Chapter 5**   
  


 

Molly went to work alone while I did my final days of recuperation.  I felt much better about life as I headed back to work to meet Callie for coffee on my first day back.  I had entertained myself the extra days she made me take off work by re-living our last conversation and kiss.  I even went to my car and got out her picture and bag of stuff that I never gave back to her.  We haven’t been going to coffee for the longest time, but I think it’s time to re-instate our little customs.  If kissing is available again, and we are really trying to see if we can be what the other needs then I need to get back into a routine with her.  An easy routine where we do things together in a subconscious way that signals how in sync we are.  It’s my first day back at work and I am excited and eager to be back, so I’m early.  I’m excited and eager to see Callie, so I’m early.  Callie is late.    
  
I’m thinking about the first day that I met her and had know idea that my future was leading me to her.  I still worked at Mercy and had come to do Mr. O’Malley’s heart surgery instead of Preston.  It worked for me.  I met Callie briefly and remembered her bright smile, caring eyes and willingness to be around the O’Malleys.  I didn’t think much about her relationship to them, but she appeared to be a girlfriend of some sort.  I couldn’t think which O’Malley she was the girlfriend of though; it was odd.  
  
And then I’m thinking about how we became friends after that horrible surgery and I needed someone to hang out with.  I was willing to let Sloan hit on me just so that I didn’t have to be alone that night.  Callie was along for the ride and that has to be the best piece of serendipity that life has thrown my way in about 20 years.  Laughing, confessing to having a good time, and that we don’t like people sealed the deal and we steadily became good friends.  I had no idea when I came to Seattle Grace that I would have been led to this gorgeous Latina, but here I am on the breezeway waiting for her and smiling to myself about the possibilities before me.  
  
I was early and lost in my happy daydreams.  Callie was late—late and self-conscious.  It was like when I asked her out on our date and she hesitated and pulled back just a little and then freaked hard core.  It’s like watching someone take a bite of something that they are uncertain of, tasting the bite and not really wanting to and then hopping up and coughing into a napkin.  I feel like I am watching a slow motion loop of her and I do not want to see the end of the clip because I know what is probably coming.  
  
“Hey.”  I start.  
  
“Ah, hey.  Hello there.  Um.”  
  
“Are you.  Are you ok?”  I ask flabbergasted.  What happened in a few days?  “I thought you weren’t coming.”  
  
“No. No. No.  I am sorry.  I was late.”  
  
Does she have a brain hamster too?  Or maybe it’s a brain gopher?  We couldn’t possibly have the same neuro issue, could we?  I think that her brain gopher is digging a tunnel through the part of her brain that controls intelligent speech patterns.  
  
“OK.  Callie.  I don’t have any wine to offer you to calm down.  I can’t pretend to read the menu.  So you’re going to have to breathe.  Just focus.  We’re here on the breezeway and having coffee near the chief’s office.”  
  
She looks toward his office and I see panic in her eyes.  
  
“You have to speak Callie!  I can’t do this.”  Now her panic is full blown and she is staring at me.  “Just spit it out Callie and quit thinking about it!”  
  
“Karev told everyone that I’m gay.  That we’re.  That we’re gay.  He told George that he made me gay.  He…”  
  
I put my hand on her upper arm and squeeze.  “You have to stop.  Slow down. And start from the beginning.”  I say it slowly like the day she freaked out in the experimental frozen guy surgery.  
  
She blinks once, twice, three times.  Her nostrils flare.  “Karev said that he saw us all cozy in the exam room, and that he had to wait for me forever at your house when we took you home from your ankle.  
  
“He.”  She’s angry.  “He was talking to Izzie Stevens at the nurse’s station and he told her that George made me gay.  They were laughing and then she said they had to go tell Christina and Merideth.  They left, and everyone has been looking at me since then.”  
  
“And you’re freaking out?”  
  
“Yes, a little.  A lot.  A whole lot.”  She meets my eyes with hers, but I can see through them into the back of her mind where there is an escape plan waiting.  She is sad and maybe she doesn’t want to hurt me, but I breathe deep in the knowledge that she’s going to.  
  
“Okay.”  I say accepting it.  “Okay.  Callie.  This is not what I want to say.  This is not what I wanted to hear.  I think that I am going to say something horrible right now, because I can’t think of the right thing to tell you.  
  
“What can I say to make it better?  Should I make it better? Callie, this is too hard.  I don’t even know if I should make it better.”  I finish in a whisper.  She’s crying.  This has been a tough bridge for her to walk on and the other kids are bouncing it and making it shake and she’s afraid of falling in the water.  I want to be there to catch her, I do, but I don’t know if that’s enough to get her to the other side and to my welcoming arms.  I’m crying now.  I had let myself begin to hope again.  I hate being wrong, again.  
  
“I don’t know how to fix this.”  She says in a choke sob and she scurries back along the breezeway the same direction she had come.  
  
***  
  
I do a surgery and then since the schedule is clear, I head home.  I don’t remember the drive home.  I know that I must be breathing, but I feel like the air has been knocked out of me again.  I get home and take one of the mild pain pills that Callie gave me for my ankle.  I don’t really need it, because I have been so gentle on my ankle, but I’d like to sleep before the hamsters put together the full fledged production they have begun to plan in my head day.  It will be a Greek Tragedy I’m sure and will have mournful laments about how I chose Callie, while hurting Molly, and now stand alone because Callie has hurt me.  As I stand at the sink drinking my water I stare at the picture of Callie, my sunshine, and the dam breaks.  
  
Eventually the tears stop and I am engulfed by the silence and the sounds of my breathing.  I don’t want to know, I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to care.  Please just let me not care anymore.  I go to bed in my clothes only pausing to take off my shoes and my ankle brace.  I lay there with a pillow over my head until I can’t breathe and then I move to breathe and do it again.  I’m not trying to suffocate myself, I just want to block out the world as much as I can.  One lone hamster steps forward into the spotlight of my mind and I cry again.  
  
I am tired of this.  I never wanted a workplace relationship. I shut myself down personally a long time ago and threw myself into my work.  Being the best, an attending, a world-renown heart surgeon, and impeccably professional became what was important to me.  Unfortunately since coming to Seattle Grace I have slipped.  I have not been a very good teacher although I am working on it.  And even though I didn’t want personal entanglements at work I found that I am in two relationships with colleagues—one trying to be official but choking to death and one officially unofficial and now officially off the record.  I am just glad that the gossip monkeys haven’t jumped on Molly as well as Callie.  Maybe they aren’t that perceptive?  I’ve got to hope for something.  
  
I had some initial qualms as Mark began his comments, but Callie needed to process out loud and Sloan was confining his comments to just me instead of spreading gossip, so I let it go.  Callie was too important to let that effect me.  I do understand that Callie is having a hard time, she’s had enough drama at work and she probably doesn’t want to be gay.  At some point though the dust has to settle and you have to face what is truly important to you, even if that means that you are gay and there is drama at work that you didn’t count on.  
  
I chose Callie.  I chose to see this through despite the difficulty.  Maybe it isn’t my choice anymore?  Maybe Callie has made a different choice for me?  I am tired of choosing.  I chose and it still has not gotten me anywhere.  
  
I sigh as I hear the key in the front door.  Molly is home.  Is Molly my home?  Have I been blind to a once in a lifetime second chance?  Molly wouldn’t have these problems. Molly already went through her realizations and knows what is important to her and what it is worth to her.  She is confident and knows what she wants.  She has clarity.  I want clarity.  
  
***  
  
For hours Molly ignored me.  She went for a walk, talked on the phone, took a shower, listened to music, and then she began cooking.  I could hear her getting dishes out of cupboards, rustling in drawers to find utensils, getting in and out of the fridge.  I was in a weird dream-like slumber, it wasn’t quite like the out of body experiences that I had been having a while back, but it sure wasn’t reality either.  
  
~I could imagine the sounds of Molly and I having breakfast on a day off and hear the sounds of us moving dishes and talking about the day or the previous night.  I could see her bringing home a dog or iguana or some bizarre thing that she would want me to help her take care of.  I could see us playing chase in the yard with a water hose and some insanity before running into the house and down the hall to our bedroom.~  
  
I heard the television start up.  Molly was out of the kitchen now but the smells were filling the house.  She turned on a Spanish news station.  I smiled.  She liked to watch the news in Spanish to see if any of her college Spanish had stuck with her.  She had taken four years of it in high school and studied it in college before going abroad for a semester to Nicaragua.  
  
~Now I can imagine Callie talking on the phone to her brother and slipping into Spanish every once in a while when she didn’t want me to understand.  I can see her on the couch waiting for me to join her and cuddle up.  I hear her laughter which gets me every time and I can see us chasing each other around the living room and down the hall to our room with pillows and shrieks.~  
  
What the hell kind of pill did Callie give me for my ankle?  I’m still trying to wake up and I’m sitting cross legged where I was laying down.  I haven’t made much progress but I am yawning and stretching to make sure my muscles work.  I’m fairly certain that those were just imaginings, but a small part of me is genuinely unsure of who is walking down the hall.  I yawn again as Molly comes to sit by me on the bed.  Again she doesn’t hesitate or ask permission, she just gets up on the bed with me.  
  
“Can you eat?”  She asks.  When I nod she gets up and I’m not sure if I’m supposed to follow her or not, so I just sit there.  But she comes back before I can worry too much about it.  She has a bowl of some kind of heavenly pasta vegetable cheesy goodness that I’ve certainly never had cooked at home before.  
  
“Why did you leave early, Erica?”  
  
“Oh, you know brain tumor and all—they put me on light duty.”  
  
She laughs despite herself and I join in because I can admit that it’s pathetic.  “Come on now, I cooked for you and am being supportive.  Help a girl out.”  
  
“Oh, yeah.  I’ll spill it now for sure.”  She gives me her death glare and although I’m not scared, I do start talking.  “Well it seems that Callie has changed her mind.”  
  
“What?  What did she say?  I didn’t mean to scare her off, I just wanted to make sure she knew to not screw up.”    
  
I’m shocked, what the hell is Molly talking about. “No, she said that Karev told everyone about us.  What?  What did you mean YOU didn’t mean to scare her off?  Oh my god what did you say to her?”  
  
“I just.  Oh well, here’s the thing.  I have wanted to talk to her for ages.  She’s important to you and messing up and I really have just wanted to talk to her to understand.  So I paged her to my office.”  
  
“You what!”  I shriek horrified that Molly confronted Callie.  I would’ve liked to have seen it—it couldn’t have gone well.  Molly should have had more sense than that.  
  
“Well I didn’t want to corner her in the lounge or at the nurse’s station.  It’s not like you can have a private conversation in this hospital.”  
  
“What did you say to her?”  I say slowly and angrily.  
  
“I paged her to my office and we just chatted.  I let her know that I was supportive of you and that I really wanted you guys to be happy.  I wanted to make sure she knew not to screw it up.”  
  
“I can’t believe you.  You paged her to your office!  How intimidating Molly!  Geez.  What did she say to you?”  
  
“Well… not much actually, but she seemed to get it.  That I was supportive and she shouldn’t screw up.”  Her eyes search my face and she’s concerned that she did the wrong thing now.  “I had to Erica.  If I’m going to pretend and relinquish any hold I may have over you, then she had better well know to not screw it up.”  
  
I close my eyes.  I’m not angry—Molly stepped up to bat for me and was supportive and protective.  I can’t be angry with her, she acted with so much love without the possibility of any reward for herself.  She was certain about it too, until I kept badgering her.  
  
“Erica?”  She puts her hand on my forearm.  It’s resting in my lap holding the pasta bowl.  She wants to know if I’m angry.  
  
“Oh, Molly.  I’m so sorry that I’ve hurt you.  I can’t believe all of this.  I know that you truly want the best for me.  It had to take a lot for you to have paged Callie.  I know that’s not normal for you.  And thank you for trying to protect me.”  I put the pasta bowl on the nightstand and reach for her.  We hold hands silently for a moment.  “I hope you threatened her with something really good.”  
  
“I only went so far Erica and you know I’ll never tell.  So you’re not mad at me then?”  
  
“No.  You acted from a good place and I don’t think you caused any harm.  She was freaked out about Karev telling everyone about us and then what they were all saying about her and me and whatever.  I think she broke it off.  I had just decided to let her back in and I think she broke it off.  Mission cancelled.”  
  
“Oh, honey.  I’m sorry to hear that.  Well, she freaked out before and you avoided each other and had more freak-outs so maybe this is all part of the journey that you’re supposed to take together.  I wish this was all a lot easier for the both of you.”  How does Molly do that?  She doesn’t deny her own feelings, or even hide them, but she honestly wants the best for Callie and I, when it clearly isn’t what would be best for her.  
  
***  
      
I don’t want to do this over the phone, but I am not waiting and I don’t want to do this at work—besides the hamsters have already dialed the number and it’s ringing so it would be rude to hang up now.  
  
“Hello.”  Callie says in a breathless whisper.  I’m surprised she picked up.

“Hey are you home?  Can we talk?  I don’t want to bother you if you’re still at work or whatever.”  I feel lame.  I sound lame.  I’m tired of lame.  
  
“Uh.  Yeah.  I’m home alone actually.”  
  
“You know I’m not great at this talking thing either.  I haven’t had to talk much.  My body language and eyes can pretty much tell anyone what they need to know.”  
  
“It’s been something that we’ve had in common.”  She’s trying to talk to at least.  
  
“I’ve begun to think about relationships as marathons.  I think talking is what makes it or breaks it in a relationship.  It’s the final leg of  a marathon.  Like a relationship the beginning is nice, but 26 miles later?  Adrenaline and thrill fade away and the runner is left with survival and being above average.  I know we didn’t have much of a relationship, but I thought we started out well enough.”  
  
“Erica,  I’m sorry.  I—”  
  
“No, let me continue.  I want to see if I’ve got this right.  We didn’t have many people at the start of our race—Addison really, and when we got into the tough part of the marathon we faltered.  The tattoo of our steps on the course should have been a steady encouragement, but instead it became the chorus of Karev driving you insane.  
  
“None of us wants to be talked about Callie.  None of us wants people to misunderstand or twist things.  None of us wants people to have a negative opinion.  But, Cal, you don’t run the race, or choose your career, or carry on relationships based on what other people say.  I chose cardio because I wanted it, not because someone else was cheering me on.  I fought the boys club every step of the way. You chose ortho because you wanted it just the same as me.  We both know what the good old boys were saying, but that didn’t stop either one of us.  
  
“And, well you chose to be friends with Addision, who was not liked when she got here.  If I understand the whisperings correctly, they called her Satan?  And then you became friends with the Ice Queen, Attila the Hanh, even when your very own roommate was engaged in some kind of Jeckyll/Hyde routine of over-worship/hate.  But despite that you became friends with me.  
  
“So I know it isn’t easy for you, but I don’t understand how you could come so far in the race to just give up because you think there might be negative talking about you.  I thought you had more drive, more independence, more strength.  I knew this wasn’t going to be easy, what with Sloan’s jabs, and you turning to him as confidant.”  I spit the last out with venom in my voice.  “But I was willing to open myself up to you, to the possibility of an us—to risk gossip at work, to risk trusting you, to know that I would have to be the stronger one even though I was just as nervous and just as afraid.  
  
“Part of me has felt very juvenile in all of this.  I always smiled for days when we first started hanging out.  I loved that my life had a positive force besides work.  After our date I was giddy with excitement.  That was ok to me.  I welcomed the youthful joy and exuberance that was breaking into my carefully crafted lonely ultra professional life.  This, this drama and heartache and angst… this feels like 12 year old drama to me though, and I’m pretty sure that grown up drama should be a little different.”  
  
Callie is silent on the end of the line.  She had stopped interrupting once I got into my speech and I wonder if she was listening after all.  “I thought I was stronger too.”  She finally whispers and I can hear her tears falling even though I am miles away.  
  
***  
  
I’m standing on the breezeway alone with my thoughts and the view.  “What are you thinking?”  Callie says in a whisper and I jump.  “Ooh.  Sorry.  I didn’t mean to startle you.”  I’ve been back at work a few days but it’s been a while since our conversation on the phone.  Richard said to limit my hours to not aggravate my ankle any more than I have to.  He also looked at me like a parent wolf.  He seemed to sense a weariness in me that has been slowly building.  He has his quiet way of letting you know that he knows when there’s nothing to know, just a gut level emotional state.  I just accept it.  It’s like Bailey’s look when she was there the day Callie and Sloan came out of the on-call room.  Part of me wishes that one of them would just say what to do.  They don’t even have to talk much or go into details.  Just decide.  It’s a totally bizarre desire for me.  I have never wanted someone else to tell me what to do.  And I don’t even know what I’m deciding about.    
  
Do I stick with Callie until she flat out says that she cannot do this and we are officially not going to even try to have a relationship?  How long do I wade through this craziness that has become us, is there a time limit?  Would it be better to call it now on account of rain?  Delay or cancel?  Molly may have stepped out of the way, but if Callie isn’t in the way, then does she need to be out of the way anymore? I am brooding.  
  
Cough.  “Erica?”  She’s so gentle and I pinch the ridge of my nose and turn to her, adjusting my foot and cane so that I can face her without twisting.  She watches me and smiles, but it doesn’t glow like her smile should.  
  
“I don’t know.  I don’t know who we are anymore.  You used to be my go to person for whatever was on my mind, but I can’t seem to tell you anything now.”  
  
“Hmmm.”  She starts.  “Well, you used to want to have difficult conversations with me.  You used to smile and offer me your wine so that my heart could chill out.  Maybe you should try again, but this time I can offer you my wine and a chance for your heart to chill out?”  She puts her hand over mine on the railing.  
  
“What--”  I shake my head.  “No. Never mind.  I don’t think I can, Cal.  Not today.”  She holds me tighter not letting me get away, and she doesn’t break eye contact with me.  I think she’s still afraid of how many rattlesnakes are in the bag that she keeps contemplating putting her hand into.  I can’t blame her.  It makes me angry though, that she created this situation in the first place, so with that twinge of anger I ask her my question.  “What was is like with Sloan?”  
  
Her hand drops.  I wobble slightly at the removal of her hand.  “What.”  She says.  It’s a question, but it’s so deflated and hurt that it just hangs there.  
  
“What was it like when you were with Sloan and trying to figure out what your feelings were for me?  How was it to juggle the two of us?  How did you quantify or decide what to do?”  I look down at the pager that has gone off.  It is mine, but it does not indicate a 911.  It can wait.  If she is to help me figure this out she’s going to have to share how this deciding process works.  I don’t tell her about the swirl in my brain that is Callie and Molly.  Instead I ask her a question that will push her and maybe hurt her, but will help me.  
  
She closes her eyes hoping that I’ll repeat my question, but not repeat so much as ask something totally different.  I do not grant her wish on either count.  “We were just friends, Erica.  You know how it was.  Then Addison had to come and ask me if we were a couple.  Then we weren’t friends anymore.  Not just friends.  I couldn’t look at you the same because I realized you weren’t the same.  You hadn’t changed, but I saw you for the first time.  I changed.  I didn’t want to believe Addison.  I didn’t want to hurt my friendship to you, but I had to prove that Addie wasn’t right.  Sloan and I have always been friends.  We were dirty, flirty inappropriate sharing friends, but friends.  
  
“Then I was avoiding you.  Then I was avoiding avoiding you.  So I just had to be around you and tell you.  You didn’t blink and it was okay between us and I was with Sloan so there was nothing to freak out about.  You were just so gorgeous and fun and funny.  I flirted with you, with him, all of us together.  But it got to the point that he noticed.  He noticed that I was somewhere else, all the time.  He figured it out before I did and he would use it to get me.  Until finally you kissed me in the elevator and he pushed me towards you and I had to figure out what this was between us.”  
  
“Were you torn that your sex friendship with Sloan and electric friendship with me were mutually exclusive?  Did you feel that you had to choose just one?”  I have to interrupt her—she’s just telling me the story I already know.  I want to know if she was torn between the good times she had with me and the good times she had with Sloan.  Did she feel upset about both of us and not want to lose either of us.  I don’t have time to work up to the explanation, as my pager buzzes a second time.  
  
“Yeess.”  She replies wondering if she’s going to regret this admission.  “I didn’t want to betray you and all that we had created by being with Sloan.  Somehow though what I had with Sloan made me able to talk to you, to flirt with you, to think about you.  He was like my anchor as I danced closer to the edge with you.”  
  
“I think I understand a little bit more.”  Callie is clearly confused.  “Nothing had been said between us, no agreement, so there was no betrayal.  Yet you felt conflicted about your interaction with the two of us.”  
  
Callie nods slowly.  “What’s going on Erica?”  
  
“I’m learning.”  I sigh.  I might as well plunge right in.  “Remember I do the therapy thing?”  She nods.  “Well, I’m learning about who I am and what I want.  Right now I feel torn and I shouldn’t but I do.  I wondered if it was how you felt when you were involved with Sloan and thinking about me.  
  
“You want to know what’s between us, Cal?  I get that, but it’s not enough for me.  I may not have traveled in this unexplored country before, but I have come to some realizations about myself.  I know that I’m not happy with men.  I know that I’d rather be alone than be with one.  I know that all I need to sustain me is that ultimate friendship.  Where there’s no holding back, no fear, because it’s all out in the open and clear.  It’s all mutual.  
  
“And beyond that ultimate friendship, I can only imagine how wonderful the physical side of the relationship would be.  There could be no worry for me that that would follow automatically.  It’s like knowing that you love the ice cream you’re eating and that when you get to the bottom it gets even better because there’s waffle cone and chocolate.  
  
“I’m gay, Cal.  Lesbian.  Whatever.  I don’t need to find out what’s between us to know that.  I’ve denied or avoided it long enough.  Molly began my realizations and you brought them to the surface.  
  
“I’m gay in the `let’s go tell the Chief and move in together and make out in front of the hospital again on purpose gay.  Zero to sixty.  I don’t have any doubts about that and I know that work will be different because I will have a life, but it won’t crumble.  
  
“But you don’t know that do you, Cal?  And how will you ever be sure of it?  How long will I wait and what pain will you put me through to decide?  
  
“You listen to what Karev, Stevens, Yang, Grey and O’Malley say.  You worry that you’re gay or not gay.  You can’t seem to talk to me when you should.  When there’s doubt Callie, it’s there for a reason.  You hesitate for a reason.  You aren’t ready or you don’t want it enough or whatever.  
  
“So what are you going to listen to?  Your heart, your fears, your insecurities, your skin telling you it’s on fire?  What are you going to do?  I’m not going to play around anymore, Cal.  It’s zero to sixty with no rules or hesitations.  You decide.”  I turn with my cane and walk away rolling my head around on my neck to try to relieve the pressure.  “I’m coming.”  I mutter as they page me again.

 

 

 


	6. Six

_**When To Quit.  Part 6/7** _   
  


 

The night swim.  There’s nothing like a pool after dark.  A heated gym pool when no one else is there.  It’s quiet except for the sloshing of the water and the electric buzzing of the lights.  In the water I’m weightless, but the weights in my mind hang heavily as I swim lap after lap.  I focus on my breathing, the number of strokes it takes to reach the edge and executing the perfect flip turn.  I had hoped tonight I could find the usual peace in the rhythm, the numbers, and the function of each stroke.  
  
Most of the hamsters have moved on, but a few stragglers have lingered blocking the doorways of my mind.  I suppose it is rather like my issues settling down and leaving me with just the most important ones.  Not teaching Yang, being a better teacher, not having a social life—those are all issues that have settled in.  Yang is less persistent because she has to follow the new rules of mandatory rotation, so I am less annoyed with her.  I have focused on being a better teacher and had numerous conversations with the chief and Molly about small details to focus on.  It’s been uncomfortable, but I’ve seen the difference—in the residents and myself.  As for a social life, well, it’s not that I don’t have one any more.

I chose.  I got my hopes up.  I hurt one and then was hurt by the other.  It doesn’t make any sense.  I went from no social life to a double one in no time and it’s no wonder that I don’t know how things ended up this way.  Callie and I are not avoiding each other, but it is very professional.  Molly went to stay at the Archfield and has been incredibly busy.  I have been hobbling around with my cane and watching without seeing.  As I swim I try to block out everything and focus on the physical reality of forcing myself to exhaustion.  Some thoughts get through the armor, they always do.   
  
“I’m not an experimenter.  I don’t like to experiment.  But then you showed up and we did it together and the experiment was kind of a success.”  
  
“Look I’ve never done this before.  I’ve never kissed a girl.  I’m not sure I even like kissing girls.  I don’t actually like kissing girls.  I just like kissing one girl—you.”  
  
“You’re the only woman I’ve kissed.”  
  
“Hey.  We can be scared together.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
I push hard reaching farther with every stroke, kicking harder, turning quicker.  The final hamster has set up on a stool in the middle of my brain and is repeating himself over and over.  Only it sounds a lot like Callie.  Another lap.  And another.  One more.  I can feel the fatigue setting in.  I know that it will only be worse tomorrow as it has been for the last week.  Always worse tomorrow.  I don’t sleep and yet I get up on-time or early.  It is unnatural to have these loops in my head.  It is unnatural to have my life and now my work be affected by an issue like this.  It should be simple enough to identify the problem, analyze it, create a treatment plan, and cut it out.  I hate that I have become the hamster on the wheel.  
  
I finish and go home.  Home.  How come that simple word holds such significance?  It is empty now.  Molly has gone to stay at the Archfield, while she finds a place.  She took her brutal honesty, heart, and comfort with her and the house sits empty.  It groans and shifts like the discomfort of my mind and muscles.  Molly makes things simpler—she named the unspoken clouds that were hanging over she and I.  But she made it harder as well.  Molly is a journey that I had only barely hoped to take, but she was here just now, and the bus has left.     
  
Callie is my life at Seattle Grace though.  She was my first friend here and she is the only way that I understand the social bustle that fills the halls of Seattle Crazy.  She explained the inner workings of the people here and while she tried to help me avoid problems, she let me forge my own way.  She eased the pain with her smile, brightened the highlights with her full-throated laugh, and celebrated the triumphs with playful challenge.  She set me on fire with her caresses, hugs, cuddling, and kiss.  She is my present, this is her time of my life and I cannot let that get away.  I told her that she hesitates for a reason.  But I hesitate too.  
  
I have hesitated because I am unsure if she can give me what I want.  I did not hesitate because I didn’t want her.  I hesitated because I was afraid that she didn’t want me.  I hesitated because I turned to look the past in the face and had to let it go.  It wasn’t that I wanted Molly more than Callie.  It’s just that I wanted Molly before I wanted Callie.  I never had a chance to have a chance with her and it was hard to actually have to face that and let it go.  
  
***  
  
“I’ve been warned, outed, and dared to tell the chief and move in all in the last two weeks!  The person who I should talk to and finally want to talk to is shutting me out.  That’s you in case you are still too pig-headed to understand.  The only other person that I talk to is unhappy with me.”  She pauses to flare her nostrils and tilt her head so that her eyes square up to mine.  It is like matador sizing up the bull, staring it down, and challenging it.  Her features are set, her eyes are hard and she is challenging me to charge at her.  To break the careful sheet of ice that we have laid down between us.  
  
A sudden flash of anger flares up and I glibly say, “Oh, we’re talking now?  Last I recall we couldn’t even stand on the breezeway and have coffee.  The gossip monkeys might see us.”  I might as well have slapped her, and it hurts me too.  Now I am thinking that she is the bull ready to charge and I am suddenly an uncertain matador.  
  
Her heat is emanating from her skin.  I can feel it through my scrubs.  I grip the handle of my cane hard.  I suck in a lungful of air and prepare to respond.  But she’s not done,  “Beyond that I don’t even know if I’m gay.  I just know that I want you!”  
  
Hmm.  What?  “What?”  It falls from my mouth because there is really just nothing else I can say.    I have been so angry with her that I wasn’t ready for her to step up and say that.  
  
“Oh.  No you.  You.  You didn’t hear me?  Fine, Erica.  You know what.  I don’t chase people.  I don’t wait around and hope for people to come to me.  I freaked out.  I freaked out hard core and I get that you’re mad that I went to Mark, but when I came to you?  You—blew me off.  I was freaked out because you and I had finally started to move forward and then the whole hospital was talking about the business that we didn’t even have!  You acted like I was just curious and wouldn’t have a relationship with you.  You had to take it to extremes and moving in and crazy talk.”  
  
She’s ramping up for more, but that’s it.  She’s mad at me?  “I didn’t shut you out, Callie!  I chose you.  I sat in that exam room and talked to you and kissed you and chose you.  I swallowed my pride and accepted that you had done what you needed to do to be sure and be with me.”  I pause to make sure that she understands I mean her sleeping with and turning to Sloan.  Then I soften slightly, “I told you I had doubts and you said you wanted a chance.  We sealed it with a kiss, Callie.”  I can feel the heat of my face and feel the tears fill my eyes.  I sigh an angry puff of air. “I finally get back to work and then you spazzed out on me about Karev and Stevens and couldn’t even be near me to have coffee.”  I breathe and shake my head.  “No, Callie.  You’re not the only victim here.  I chose you.  I wanted you, but I was afraid that you didn’t want me too.  I’m sorry that I shut down on you, but try to see what I’m feeling.”  Her brown eyes are locked on mine but it hasn’t clicked yet.  “You asked me for a chance, your kiss assured me that you wanted it, and then you scurried away and left me standing there my heart dangling, because of what some interns said.”  
  
I pause because I have to.  I am once again going to challenge her and I know that it will hurt if she doesn’t rise to the challenge.  I know that I will have to deal with a crushing reality if she is really not going to fire back.  “Have you really thought about this Cal?  You, me, talking, no sleeping with someone else, the gossip monkeys, an actual relationship?”  I look around as I talk and gesture just a little to indicate the hospital around us and all the people in it.  
  
Callie follows my gesture with her eyes.  It is not lost to her that we are standing on the same breezeway where we couldn’t even have coffee two weeks ago.  She shakes her head slightly.  “Have you?  Have you thought of me?  Or have you been thinking of Molly?”  
  
“This is about me and you.”  I said trying to cut Callie off.  I want to deal with the one issue.  I know they are tied together in handicapping ways, but I need to settle one point at a time.  The point I want to settle right now is whether we have a chance or not.  Callie came to me in anger, but she came to me.  
  
She comes back over the top of me.  Her anger rising again and her voice too.  “No, this is about everything.  This is about you and me.  This is about Mark Sloan, Molly Gutierrez, the gossip monkeys, George, and Izzie.  Everything is on the table or there’s nothing on the table.  You want zero to sixty?  Start now.”  She closes her mouth, crosses her arms in front of her chest and stares me down.  
  
I stare back at her, my eyes searching her face for sincerity.  We’ve had moments before where I began to believe and they evaporated, but we’ve never had anger before.  I nod my head at her and say low and slow, “Then let’s put it on the table.”  
  
Silence.  A pager.  Interrupted.  
  
I stand on the breezeway watching her go.  Nothing has been resolved.  I don’t know what game we are playing or whether any points have been scored or if it has started or finished.  I just feel like I am on the field and have a fierce determination to win.  I don’t feel like I am competing against Callie for a change.  I feel like we are team mates that disagree drastically on how to win the game, but that agree that they need each other to do it.  I feel better than I have in days and I just stand there and cherish the moment.  It is full of anticipation.  
  
***  
  
I’m scrubbing out of surgery when Callie finds me for round two.  She looks like she’s been waiting hours to talk to me and she’s full of the determination that has built up.  She is gorgeous not because of her mocha skin, or great mouth, or delicate curve of her body—no she’s gorgeous because she looks determined.  She looks like my Callie.  “I shut down, but I came back to see what was what.  You want to know what I’ll listen to?  The gossip monkeys or my heart?  My heart, Erica.  I always listen to my heart, but sometimes I get overwhelmed by all the other stuff, you know.  But my heart is steady and I always follow it.”  I don’t care that she’s mad at me.  I’m glad actually, she’s here and she’s blasting me, but she fighting for it, for us.  
  
“You are mad at me because I asked for a chance and then freaked.  But I came back.  I have always come back and you need to see that.”  Callie is angry but her eyes are searching mine for a glimmer of hope.  She must see enough because she continues, “You said I hesitate and am not sure.  But I think that’s what you’re doing.  You have hesitated because you aren’t sure of me.”  Callie stops, waiting for confirmation.  I know that my face is soft instead of defensive, but I give her nothing else.  Her eyes shift, she’s thinking.  “What made you give me a second chance the day you were here to check on your ankle?”  
  
Here we have arrived at the beginning of the game.  The whistle has been blown and there is only seconds before the first action will be taken.  It’s amazing what can happen in between the whistle and the kick off.  It is like those few seconds when I reaching in front of Callie durig cement boy’s surgery and was so close I could have kissed her.  It’s what I want to do now.  I don’t though.  We haven’t agreed on a game winning strategy yet and the whistle has already been blown.  It is a millisecond’s chance, but I have to know what strategy she is going for.  “I knew what I wanted, Cal.  I wanted a relationship with you.  Molly is a reminder of what it is like to not follow your feelings; to let go when you should hang on.  I didn’t want to let go of you.”  
  
Her face has fallen because she realizes that she’s hurt me with her indecision.  She realizes that I wasn’t trying to push her, but trying to protest myself.  Her eyes are full of desire to make things right again.  She rests her hand on top of mine on the edge of the scrub sink.  We are standing closer than we have ever stood before at work and a scrub room is not a private place.  I don’t want to push her and panic her, but I need to let her know what I want.  
  
“I don’t want to let go of you.  I don’t want to push you.  But I do want a relationship and you have an escape plan.  I can see it in your eyes every time you panic.  And every time I see that escape plan in your eyes—you run.  I need and want to move forward.  I want it to be with you but I understand that maybe you can’t give me that.”  
  
There is a commotion in the OR and a panicked George is at the door.  Interrupted.  
  
This time I leave and Callie is standing there watching me rush into the OR.  She is left to wonder what has been resolved and what game we are playing.  She has to accept the challenge or bow out gracefully.  Either way the whistle has been blown.  
  
***  
  
Lunch.  Another day.  Another conversation cut into pieces and spread out like a puzzle on the table.  Some pieces are face up while others are face down.  I think that Callie and I have the picture on the box and are at least working together to find the edges and then piece it together, well, together.  The thing about carrying on a conversation only at work is that you get interrupted and it can take days.  Yet if you are each separately too stubborn to give the first inch, then there you are stuck having a conversation in two minute sound bites spread over a limitless space of time.  Callie smiles and joins me at the table.   I reach out and touch her lower arm.  Realizing what I just did, I pull back unsure.  It’s very public and I don’t know exactly where we stand.    
  
“Erica.  It’s okay.  We’re going to be okay.”  Her eyes hold no trace of panic.  Her voice holds only comfort and care.    
  
“It’s just I forget where we are sometimes and I don’t know what you are okay with.  Before Addison came with her revelation, we could laugh and touch and it was okay.  It seems like it should be better or easier now that we’ve accepted her revelation, but it’s just so much harder.”  
  
“I know.  I miss being able to put my arm on your shoulder when we walk for coffee and laugh about nothing.”  She smiles and there is the hint there of calm, or knowing that we had something good and it’s not gone.  
  
“For the record you have shut down on me more than I have shut down on you.  I know you were mad at me because I couldn’t handle you freaking out about Karev and Stevens.  And you have every right to be upset with me.  I’ve wanted you to talk to me and when you did, I was so tired that I missed a big chance.  But on my side you have freaked out every step of the way and every time I begin to hope, you push me away in one way or the other.  And it hurts so much worse every time.”  
  
“I messed up.  I messed up with Mark and didn’t come to you.”  
  
“You asked for a chance and then you told me you couldn’t fix this because of Karev and Stevens.”  
  
“I panicked because of what Karev and Stevens said, because of the gossip they were starting and because I wasn’t even sure if it was true.  I panicked because it all felt so familiar.  Izzie Stevens and her friends talking about me.  The hospital knowing my business and judging me.  I was there again.  You were all bright and shiny with your new best friend, and I was left behind.  George was all helpful and supportive of his best friend, and then he slept with her.  I was left behind.”  
  
“Molly and I were not together.  And we never slept together.”  
  
“Maybe not, but listen to me.  I felt like I did back then.  I couldn’t just talk to you when she was around.  It was awkward.  I didn’t know her and she didn’t welcome me.  I was on the outside and because of where we were in our relationship, you didn’t notice, or you wanted to punish me.”  
  
“But Cal, we had talked about it and you agreed to talk to me.  You asked me for a chance, even when I said I wasn’t sure.  You told me you wanted that chance.  I let you back in and you sealed it with a kiss.  I went home to finish recovering per your orders thinking we were giving this a chance.  I came back and you couldn’t even stand on the breezeway talking to me.  It was worse than when you avoided me after our first kiss.  I knew what was going to be thrown away and I was so mad that you could just walk away like that.  I was angry that you could hold out so much promise to me and then yank it back.”  
  
“Maybe if you hadn’t replaced me with Molly, you could have noticed that I was trying.  That I was freaking out and alone.  Maybe you could’ve been that caring, gentle person that I know instead of Dr. Hanh, the Ice Queen, like you are with everyone else.”  
  
Both of our pagers go off this time.  Together.  Our pagers went off together and I can’t help but think that Callie and I will be together as well.  Still interrupted.  
  
***  
  
I am nearly finished for the day, just 90 minutes to go until my shift is over.  I check the board for tomorrow and note what time I am scheduled for surgery and what time I am due in.  I make a mental note to see if Yang can be on my service in the morning since she does have the most experience and it’s a very full and complicated day.  She hasn’t been on my service very often since the chief instituted his new rotation rules, but he can’t keep her off cardio completely.  I sigh looking at the board.  Callie is still in surgery but it will finish momentarily.  I go to the locker room to get ready and change.  I meet Callie outside the scrub room.  
  
“Hey.  How did it go?”  I ask lamely.  I know it went well, the surgery is over and the patient will heal and her day is done.  It’s a place to start though and after days of trying to start conversation only to be interrupted I am desperate to make the effort again.  
  
“It went well.  You know a routine knee replacement.  If she takes care of it, she’ll be walking in no time.”  She looks me over head to toe.  It’s like she’s never seen me before.  With a glint of disappointment she asks, “Are you leaving then?”  
  
“Yes, well, I wanted to talk to you.  But my shift is over.”  I stumble on the words.  She’s my best, well, my best friend, and maybe more, why is this so difficult.  We’ve both hurt each other and we’re both trying to get past that so if we’re coming from the same place, then why is this so difficult.  
  
“Aaah.  I’m just about done for the day.  Can you wait around?  We could talk?”  
  
“Okay.  Yeah that’d be great.  Just find me, you know my usual spots.”  
  
“Give me 30 minutes.”  
  
I walk a lap on the surgical floor and smile when I see Yang torturing her interns.  She seems to have a special flare for torturing the other Grey girl.  She went from calling her a number to calling her Lexipedia.  I smile, but then decide to break her flow.  “Yang.”  
  
She snaps to attention at the sound of my voice.  “I’ll need you tomorrow.  I’ll ask Bailey about it first thing.”  I see her face brighten and I keep walking.  I smile as I hear her dismiss Lexie.  I shake my head as I realize that I just made Yang’s day and saved an intern from mini-me.  What a strange world this is.  As I continue on to one of my favorite places to relax I try to think of what to say to Callie.  Nothing comes.  No thoughts on a loop, no hamsters banging drums, nothing at all.  So I sit on the end of the couch farthest from the door and keep trying to remember what I’ upset about and what she’s upset about and why we can’t just get back to that happy place again.  
  
The last time we talked she said that I had replaced her with Molly.  Maybe on some level I had because I was hanging out with her, and not Callie, but I wasn’t speaking to Callie because she had slept with Sloan instead of being scared with me.  I wasn’t speaking to her for weeks before Molly even showed up.  Times goes quickly when you’re at a loss for what to say.  When Callie comes in she looks tired, but clean and crisp.  She has on her street clothes and she is always the picture of perfection.  I have come up with nothing, but the last squeak of a thought was that Callie thought I replaced her with Molly.  So I begin with that.  “Callie.  I didn’t replace you with Molly.  You didn’t replace me with Mark, did you?”  
  
She sits in the armchair at my end of the couch and puts her purse on the coffee table.  She has the hint of a small satisfied smile.  I wonder if she feels like I do, that maybe we will get somewhere and there really is hope.  “No.  I didn’t replace you.  I was trying to figure out if I really didn’t want to be with him, with men, and I was clearing my head, so that I could think about what I wanted with you.  I have a good relationship with him, and I know that isn’t comfortable for you, but that’s all it is:  comfortable.  And I don’t want comfortable:  I want you.  I want inspiring, amazing, electric.  I want you and that terrifies me.”  
  
“Why do I terrify you?”  
  
“I move at warp speed.  I move with confidence and whim.  I prove myself in my work.  I date whoever I want and I don’t apologize.  I don’t always think things through, but I haven’t had to.  After George I faltered.  My confidence was shaken and I questioned everything I did, wondering if my whim would be rewarded like the old Callie, or if it would be punished like the incredibly foolish mistake that I made by falling in love with George and actually meaning the vows.”  
  
“What about you is terrifying me?  You were like coming out of the forest and trying to climb a cliff.  You are so totally different from anyone I’ve been involved with.  I was frozen with a ridiculous uncertainty.  My warp speed was stopped and my confidence was held in limbo.  Just when I saw a path up the cliff there was a scary noise and I faltered.  I ran into the forest again only to return to the cliff.  I began to climb.  The path was very narrow and I was very scared.  Something scared me again and I realized how alone I was and how high I had climbed.  I was afraid to keep going, but I couldn’t go back.  You terrify me because I have to go forward with you, but I could fall and be hurt worse than anything I’ve ever experienced before.  I can’t resist you, but it’s terrifying because I couldn’t resist George either.”  
  
“So I terrify you because I’m irresistible and could hurt you?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“What do you think you are to me?”  
  
“I think I am, was, your best friend.  I think that I am the first girl you kissed.  I think that I am frustrating to you.  I think that I probably hurt you because I withheld myself from you.”  
  
“So you are irresistible and you could hurt me?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“So you scare me as much as I scare you?”  
  
“Do I?”  
  
“Yes. Callie.  I am generally calmer and more confident in this than you and I calm you down under pressure.  But I am just as scared as you.  That’s why I didn’t approach you.  That’s why you moved us forward by admitting you were afraid and sealed it with asking to be scared together.  I was too concerned with losing you to risk getting you.”  I lean forward on the couch so that my knee touches hers where she is sitting in the armchair.  I put my elbows on my knees and my palms together.  I touch my fingertips to my lips and smile because Callie is watching me.  I turn my head to the right a little and ask my next question.  “Am I George?”  
  
“No.”  This flabbergasts her.  She realizes that by being afraid I would hurt her like George she has made me into him in some way.  Callie leans forward in her chair trying to think of what to say to right this.  
  
I am thoughtful.  I never considered her relationship with George much.  I know that it was quick and reckless and messy because of working with him and her.  But I always took her as she was and didn’t consider how much it affected her current decisions.  As I understood it she had come to peace with the fact that George was hurting and idiot and she was just incredibly stupid.  She had not brooded on it as I got to know her and she didn’t let any of it get in the way of dancing or sunrise yoga or time with Mark.  Maybe I just wasn’t as clued into her then and by the time I was clued into her, she was focused on me.  “I am sorry that you could even think that I had pulled a George on you.  I am angry that you would think I could do that to you.  I was hurt and angry that you turned to Mark and slept with him.  I am disappointed that you would think I could turn around and do the same thing to you.  I will not lie to you and say that Molly isn’t important, or that in another life we would have dated.  But I won’t ask you to lie to me either and say that Mark isn’t important to you or that in another life you would have dated.”  I run the tips of two fingers on her cheek and then her lips.  I lock my eyes on hers.  “But Callie, that was another life.  You, you are my life now.  You are the one I am trying to have a chance with.  You are the one who is scary and irresistible.”  I drop my hand to her lap and my eyes to her lips.  
  
As I see them come closer I close my eyes and lean in.  Her hand goes to my cheek with the tips of her fingers just at my ears and tracing the edge of my jaw.  I hitch back a little to breath because I am so surprised by the electric jolt of it.  She doesn’t hesitate but leans forward and holds the side of my face.  I match her desire with my mouth and I put my hand out and clasp her upper arm like a lifeline.  If I’m going to drown, then she is going to save me, or come with me.  I open my mouth to explore her lips with my tongue and she sucks on it sending a shiver down to my toes.  Then her tongue is exploring my mouth before I can recover.  I am so concentrated on the kiss that my grip on her arm tightens, but I can’t think of anything else but her lips and hanging on to her.  
  
I don’t know how long we kiss.  I know it’s long enough that our shifts have ended.  I know it’s long enough that given our luck four people should have come in to interrupt us by now.  Callie is standing looking down at me with want in her eyes.  “Can we continue this conversation elsewhere?”  She says with a devilish smile.  
  
“Joe’s?”  I say weakly getting to my feet.  I’m not sure if I can walk right now.  I am still a little giddy from the kiss.  I can hear hamsters giggling like fifth graders in my brain.  I want to invite her over, or go to her place, but I feel so tattered that I opt for generic and public.  
  
“No.”  She says with her hand on my cheek.  “Your place is much quieter and I’m not done talking to you.”  She gives me a quick kiss and then grabs my hand and pulls me out of the lounge.

 

 

 


	7. Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original Note:  circa the beginning of Season 5.  (Ages ago!!!)
> 
> Thank you to those of you who’ve read and commented.  Thanks to Laniecroft whose comments made me really think.  I hope that I did your points justice.  This is unbeta-ed as were the other chapters, but this is admittedly more rough.  I'm just sickened by the Brooke news and want this piece finished.  It's a shame--I was beginning to really open up and want to be a part of this community and now I’m just not so sure.  I just read the news today about Brooke Smith and I am just sick. I have ended the story here and I hope that it is a good place.  I just don’t know for the future.
> 
> Thank you to everyone I’ve read (with Callica).

_**When To Quit.  Part 7/7** _

 

Glasses, wine, a simple dinner.  The tender moment from the lounge is has been replaced with giddy tension.  I couldn’t concentrate on the drive home and I broke the cork trying to get it out and Callie had to take over.  We have stayed in neutral territory describing our days.  She had a difficult parent that she had to convince to let her do the surgery on the kids because without it he wouldn’t walk again, but the mom was so hesitant to give consent without her husband’s permission.  I can tell it was maddening to Callie because she repeats parts of it over in the telling and she does this angry thing where she grips her fork and stops moving her hand.  Eventually it’s my turn, so I tell her about my run in with Yang and Little Grey.  
  
“You know I was killing time when you said to wait and so I went to find someone to harass.”  She gives me her best death glare.  She gets so sensitive about protecting the interns and residents.  Well, mostly the residents and mostly Yang.  I don’t have time for everybody after all.  “What?  I had time to kill and thought I could give somebody a hard time.”  She laughs now.  It’s that full Callie laugh that you wish was her ringtone in your phone and you hope she’ll call you every hour just to hear that laugh.  “So she’s torturing Lex?  What’s that girl’s name?  Little Grey?”  
  
“Lexie.”  She sighs always wanting me to be more human, or at least humane.  
  
“Lexie.  They call her Lexipedia right? What?”  
  
“I’m just surprised is all.  You don’t know her name but then you know her nickname.”  
  
“So Yang’s torturing her and I smile because I can see Lexie’s discomfort, but before you know it I’m telling Yang that I’m requesting her for tomorrow.  And then walking away and Lexie is dismissed.”  I smile again laughing at myself this time.  
  
“You can’t do that Erica.  Don’t tease her.  You know how badly she wants to be on cardio!”  She’s mad at me.  Ooops.  I didn’t think about that, wait, she shouldn’t be mad.  
  
“No, I really do need her tomorrow.  I have a complicated day and need her to be there.  I’m speaking to Bailey about it in the morning.”  
  
“Oh, so you weren’t torturing her, you were saving Lexie.”  
  
“Yes.  It was the strangest thing and I walked away feeling happy.  I blame you.”  
  
“You blame me?  You’re going soft and that’s my fault?”  
  
“I am not going soft.”  But I don’t even mean it because on her way to the kitchen she has stopped by my chair and it hovering over me with her glass in hand.  
  
“Yes.  You are.”  I have no chance to reply because she cuts me off with a kiss.  
  
I follow her into the kitchen and I can’t resist coming up behind her and putting my arms around her waist.  I have waited so long for her to be here again.  I just snuggle close to her and breath her in.  She holds her hand on my arms welcoming them and leans her head back to rest against me.  “You put my picture back up.”  
  
“Yes.  I put you back up a while ago actually.  I could only be mad at you for so long.  Kind of like you said you have to follow your heart but sometimes you get distracted.”  
  
She turns her head to me then kissing my cheek, my jaw.  And her body turning in my arms rubs against my chest and my nipples stand at attention waiting for her.  My whole body is waiting for her.  Now that’s she fully facing me she leans against the counter and pulls me into a hungry kiss.  Hands are in hair, hands are sliding up and down arms and backs, fingertips are on cheeks and darting under fabric.  I am overwhelmed in the moment with desire and lean my head back to revel in the pleasure of the moment and Callie’s mouth is on my throat leaving burning wet kisses on my skin.  Her hands are under my shirt.  “I’ve missed you so much, Callie.”  She moans devouring my skin and then with both hands I take over the kiss and bite her bottom lip as I pull her away from the counter.  
  
I’m not sure where we’re going but I don’t want to stay pushed up against the sink.  But she hesitates.  And the moment is lost.  She holds back and now there are only fingertips touching as I have stepped towards the living room and she has stayed put.  “Callie.  I won’t break our original rules.  First base, maybe second base and we can see how that works out.”  I step back towards her my voice is low and reassuring.  “I promise not to rush you.”  I give her a hug and she smiles when I pull back.  
  
“The living room?”  She says shyly.  I am disappointed, but relieved.  
  
“Yes.  Maybe together on the couch if you don’t mind being in my personal space.”  I get a half laugh on this one.  She is more nervous than a 10 year old going into heart surgery.  
  
“Okay.  Um.  I, uh, well.  I’m going to use the bathroom.  Give me a minute.”  She smiles nervously.  
  
I nod and she goes.  I get the dishes from the table and ring them into the sink.  Callie I not back yet so I rinse them and put them in the dishwasher.  I haven’t heard any noise and Callie is not in the living room yet, so I wander down the hall.  The guest bedroom is across from the front bathroom and the light is on and Callie is standing in the middle of the room.  
  
“I thought you were different Erica.  I thought you understood, especially after our talks this week.  I thought you meant it when you said that you choose me.”  She is very quiet, but the tear streaming down her face are screaming at me.  My ears are about to burst and my eyes are surely going to pop out of my head.  I rush into the room but she holds out her hands to keep me away.  I stop a few steps into the room like there is a forcefield stopping me.  
  
“Where is your girlfriend tonight, huh, Erica?  Were you just lonely?”  
  
She brushes past me not even bothering to shoulder check me out of anger.  I hear the door slam and her car screech out into the street.  It is my turn to have screaming tears and I truly break under the weight of these months crashing down on me.  Molly has been staying at the Archfield and hardly talking to me, but her stuff is still in my guest room like she is living here.  Callie, Molly and I have all been busy and it would be easy to not notice that Molly is barely speaking to me.  I am still paying the price of my anger with Callie because now it is my mistake that has come between us.  
  
***  
  
I have a busy day the next day with Yang on my service.  Once I described the procedures for the day to Bailey and the Chief, they agreed that I should have the resident with the most cardiology experience which is Yang by a long shot.  I drag through the day and rely heavily on her.  I just can’t muster any enthusiasm.  Callie wouldn’t answer when I called and hasn’t responded to any of my messages so I haven’t been able to let her know that Molly hasn’t been living there for weeks now.  At the end of my day I try her number again and it goes straight to voicemail.  I apologize and ask her to please talk to me again and hang up.  I go home and straight to bed.  I have the next day off and I sleep as late as I can and then get up and move to the couch with my body pillow.  I wrap myself around it like it can save me from this tidal wave and cry into the pillow until I am so hungry that I have to move.  I don’t have any food and I was supposed to get a three-hole punch for the office so I leave the house in search of those two items.  A traffic accident diverts my path and I drive in a daze to the farther office supply store in order to get the stapler.  
  
I wander around aimlessly in the store trying to process colors and figure out the organizational patterns.  I begin to wake up a little.  I go around a couple of times thinking.  Sometimes a chance of location will make it easier to process.  Sometimes changing location makes a difference and you are able to start processing your thoughts.  Whatever it is I am in the office supply store and I am suddenly thinking.  I am remembering different details and mentally sorting them, it’s still all a big blur.  I’m wandering around aimlessly because I need that three-hole punch and can’t find one.    
  
It’s not in the paper section to the left when you walk in.  It’s not in the clearance aisle where they have glossy brochure paper samples and display model printers and left over mini-staplers from the back to school push.  I look in the school supplies section, the notebook section, and the teacher supply section.  Surely students and teachers need three-hole punches?  I look in the laptop display area, the printer display, area, I look at blank CDs and DVDs and I even look at all the cords that go with all the crap.  
  
Can it be possible that the office supply store doesn’t have a three-hole punch?  Are they seasonal?  Only out in July to be patriotic?  How can Linens and Things be on the verge of closing and the office supply store who doesn’t have a three-hole punch is apparently well and fine?  What is wrong with the world?  And I only came to this one instead of the one by my house because of the traffic accident and detour I had to take.  
  
Sigh.  Big big sigh.  Callie’s song is on the background music of the store.  I can’t catch a break no matter where I go.  Of course Callie is here, of course her song is playing—Callie is in me, everything is about Callie.  I give up on the three-hole punch.  I have come to the edge where the linoleum ends and the rubber strip separates the furniture from the carpet.  The furniture section is a forlorn person’s hope.  
  
I like office supply stores.  Everything is in neat rows.  It is all color coded and labeled.  You can come in looking for a stapler and come home with a new desk or come in for a computer and come home with magnetic paper to print pictures of loved ones on and slap on your fridge.  It is orderly and calm.  There are many varieties of the same thing so that you can lose yourself in small stupid details.  So that you can distract yourself for a time and never be bored.  Except that the music can still get to you.  And the hamsters can get restless.  They don’t need order, neatness, or color coding.  They need activity and silliness.  And drama.  The hamsters want lots and lots of drama.  
  
I decide that I could use a different filing cabinet for my office.  The hamsters like this and they scurry about planning their next moves.  I crazily begin to think that they should build a new habit-trail out of my brain and that they would be free and I would be happier without them.  I shake my head.  Why did I ever call my thoughts crazy crack whore cirque du soleil hamsters?  Oh, yeah, Callie.  And I’m back to the start of it all.  I had to quantify something in all of this whirl of Callie that my life has become.  If I call the craziness in my brain a hamster, then it makes it seem like it’s not really my problem, but some kind of invasion.  
  
That is exactly it too.  Callie invaded my life and invaded my brain and thoughts.  Having a brain hamster really is a good way to label, color code, and make the Callie invasion orderly and calm.  I have been able to be the more confident and relaxed only because I have been able to process with the help of the hamsters and allowed her to march in.  And yet, I still had a hard time with all of this.  No wonder Callie is having a hard time.  She doesn’t have a brain hamster to help her along the way.  
  
So.  File cabinet.  That will give me something to do.  I will have to figure out all the pieces and assemble it.  I can focus on the steps and the doing just like in surgery.  I can put myself into that state where I work without music, without phones, without talking, without thoughts.  Well, I can hope.  I have achieved this nirvanha before, so it’s possible to do it again.  
  
I go to check out and give the claim tag to the clerk.  It takes me a moment of standing around waiting, but then I ask about the hole-punch.  She points to the back corner beyond the furniture that I had overlooked.  I went to where she pointed and of course they were right there and I found myself lost in the details of the price, number of sheets, easy grip and what not.  
  
Back at the check out, I see post-it notes on the front shelves of the counter.  I am a sucker for post-it notes.  I use them non-stop and I’m compulsive about buying them.  I have even been known to give them to people, who if they were smart would have realized that was quite something from me actually to give.  I buy $300 worth of stuff when I came in for  a $10 three-hole punch.  I can’t really tell you much about what I bought except that there are post-it notes and something to build and the brain hamsters are settling in for a long afternoon.  
  
***  
  
I do not look forward to going back to work.  I can’t curl up with a body pillow on a couch at work. I can’t build file cabinets and pretend my world is not crumbling down around me.  No, at work I am faced with the crushing reality that no one is having coffee with me.  No one is going to come and find me on the breezeway and smile because I am here today.  I go to the board and find my name.  It’s a full day, but I can make it more full.  I won’t even have to stab someone in the chest.  I sit down at the nurse’s station and make some calls.  I have a few surgeries that were coming up next week that can happen this week.  I will work to the maximum and lose myself in the ritual of it all.  I will focus on the steps and the procedures and the beauty of life that is the human heart.  I will teach and I will block out everything else.  
  
It has to work better than the slow descent I was in before Molly came.  It’s as if there is a whole ocean of the hospital that has faded around me.  I have been blind to everything but Callie, Molly, and getting through the day.  Now it is time work it out.  Now it is time to get back to what I came here for—kicking ass and taking names.  I will go through the residents and the interns and put everyone back where they belong.  Surgery after surgery.  Maxing out the time table and minimizing the breaks as much as possible.  Some people work out, some drink, some do drugs, some have affairs…  I work.  I cut.  I hold a 10 blade in my hand and execute perfection.  
  
Halfway through my plan for the day Molly finds me.  I am by the snack vending machines on the third floor.  She has obviously been crying and I walk with her to the nearby lobby chairs.  “What happened to you Molly?  Are you okay?”  I really can’t have her have a break down about our agreement to pretend right now.  She’s been avoiding me and now is just not the time to jump back into that painful discussion.  
  
“I got a call from Kelleen’s attorney today.”  She looks down at the box in her hand.  And this was delivered to me at the hospital.  She’s crying now and it breaks my heart.  
  
“What happened?  What is this?”  I reach toward the box and she sobs louder.  
  
“Kelleen, we both had to leave the hospital after everyone found out.  It was just too much of a scandal to bear and our relationship wasn’t established enough to handle it.  We didn’t communicate and I was so distraught over what I had done to Emilio.  She transferred out of town one direction and I transferred out of town in another.  I always lingered over losing her because she was so important to me.  She brightened my life so much and I learned so much from her personally and professionally.  But we hadn’t evolved into a true romantic relationship because of circumstances, and then circumstances ripped us apart.”  
  
She is wheezing she’s crying so hard and I am drawing circles on her back and shushing her in a desperate attempt to comfort her.  I don’t have much experience with this and it is awkward.  “I’m so sorry Molly.  I thought when you told me about her that you had been together a while and broken up.  I didn’t realize just how unfinished it was for you.”  
  
She sucks in several breaths before speaking to make sure that her voice will work.  “Her attorney called today because her estate or probate or whatever had closed.  I guess during the time that we were together she had wanted to make it into a real relationship.  I wish she had told me.  I wish she had held onto me longer while I dealt with ending my marriage and trying not to lose my job.”  She shakes her head.  “She had put me on her life insurance and that kind of stuff without telling me.  I had no idea.  And I guess she never replaced me because the attorney called to say that she was sending over some paperwork in order to process the money aspects of it.  I had no idea, Erica.”  
  
With her renewed sobs I hug her tightly and feel my own tears begin.  Molly is in so much pain from her past, that I can’t help but feel some of it too.  I am kind of glad though because it’s a little easier to comfort her knowing a small amount of her pain.  “What else?”  I gently ask her and she pulls away.  
  
“This box.”  She says and opens the lid.  “It’s full of photos and tickets and little treasures that I had given her.  I guess her family went through her stuff and figured from the time period that it was when we were together.  There are a few things in here that don’t belong to me, but it was such a sweet gesture for them to send this stuff out to me.  I just can’t believe we didn’t have more time and that we never really told each other how we felt.  I feel like I’ve lost her all over again and it hurts so much.”  
  
It seems that telling me about it and having me there has helped.  Sobs have withered down to tracks of tears and her breathing is evened out again.  I am glad that she is feeling a little better.  My pager goes off signaling that my next surgery is in fifteen minutes and she stands to go.  I stand with her and give her a big hug telling her to call me if she needs to talk.  “You know I’m not far away and will be there for you, you know?”  She lets me hug her again and then moves off down the hall.  I turn to go the other way and head back up to the surgical floor and I stop dead in my tracks.  Callie is standing there and I have no idea how long she has been standing there, but I can only imagine what she must think.  I step towards her, “Callie.”  But she isn’t having any of it and she rushes up the stairs.  I know it is no use to try and catch her.  Even if I could catch her she won’t talk now.  And I have surgery in minutes.  
  
For the rest of the week I bury myself in my work.  I hear grumbles about how I am from the nurses, residents and interns, but I don’t care.  My ankle is throbbing at the end of the day everyday and I am sick and tired of the brace and the cane and the extra time.  I don’t let any of that get to me though.  In the OR there is no room for mistakes and there is no room for personal conflict.  I teach as much as I can in each surgery so that I can limit how much energy I expend, and keep ready for the next one.  Each morning I call Callie and leave her a message and in the evening I call her to ask if she will please talk to me.  
  
***  
  
I have been waiting by the elevators for an hour this morning.  When I finally see Callie, I know that I’ve made the right decision because I am lucky enough that she is going to be alone in the elevator.  I have watched the elevator doors during this hour and practiced how long it takes me to hobble over to catch the door at the last second.  I slide in and Callie crosses her arms across her chest and is actively not looking at me.  I choose to take the silent approach and see if her anger will allow her to break through.  I might look like a tasty target and she looks like she could take someone’s head off right now.  Hey anger got us talking last time.  
  
“You can’t choose me and have an escape plan!”  
  
“I don’t have an escape plan. What are you talking about?”  
  
“What was that with Molly?  You had a lover’s quarrel in the lounge?”  
  
“No.  Unbelievable Callie.  I told you.  I chose you.  I choose you.  How many times do I have to tell you?”  
  
“What was that in the lobby then?  You two were so intense and she was crying.”  
  
“We were both crying.  It was intense.  Her ex, Kelleen?  Well her attorney contacted her and it seems that she had left her some money and a box of things.  It was too much for her to take and we were talking about it.”  
  
“Why were you crying then?”  
  
“Callie.  Molly had to leave her lover because of situations that arose at work because of their affair.  They never really had closure and Molly always had unanswered questions about what if they had a proper chance and what she had meant to her.  It was a lot to bear all these years, but she managed to get through the arrangements and the funeral and hold it together.  All of her questions returned though when she was faced with the fact that she was in the will.  She was never replaced by someone else.  The box of treasures, was like her past coming back to her, but it was bittersweet because her past was gone.  And she never had a chance to get closure because they ran out of time.”  
  
“Why were you crying?”  
  
“Her past was gone, but it never was worked through.  She had all these doubts and could never shake them.  Now she finds that she was right and it had all meant something.  Molly had let it go and maybe should have fought harder for it.  I was crying Callie because you and I have so much potential, but we always seem to be ending.  I don’t want to have those doubts with you.  I don’t want to wonder what we could have been, just because we can’t seem to get this right the first time.  I don’t want to run out of time.”  
  
“I’m still not talking to you Erica.”  
  
“You can’t shut me out forever.  I chose you and I won’t replace you.  Please.”  
  
Of course the elevator pings to a stop and Callie gets out.  I am glad that at least we were not interrupted by anyone getting on the elevator.  I am saddened that we are back to having a chopped up conversation at work that will take forever.  It is so painful to spin your wheels.  And don’t forget the interruptions.  
  
I can’t fight it though.  I’m all Callie all the time.  If I let her go now I would have to live with knowing that I once again did not take the chance that was in front of my face.  I would always have a part of me that wondered what could have been.  If I let Callie go prematurely, then I will hurt both of us the way that Molly hurt me all those years ago.  I can’t stop what I’m doing with Callie to follow the old daydream of the past.  And if I have to have a conversation with her one point at a time in order to get her back then I will.  
  
First though, I’m on to surgery, surgery, surgery.  
  
***  
  
After a solid week of surgeries, as many as would fit at all reasonably in the 80 hour time limit my ankle is pitching a temper tantrum that I can no longer ignore.  I have been icing it every night and elevating it as well, but being on my feet for these long days has been my undoing.  Callie still won’t talk to me, but she is my doctor so she’ll have to see me.  
  
“Karev, page Dr. Torres that she has a patient with a severe sprain.”  
  
“What?”  He says genuinely confused.  
  
“Karev, please don’t go dense on me now.  Not when I know you can be so perceptive.”  I point at myself and then my ankle when he still doesn’t get it.  “Dr. Torres will respond if you page her that she has a patient.  But she won’t respond if I page her telling her that I’d like to talk.  So do me a favor and do some good to offset the harm that you caused by gossiping.”  
  
His jaw drops as he begins to understand what I am telling him, asking of him, and getting ready to threaten him about.  “Page her to the exam room please.”  I wave my cane at him to show that I mean business and walk toward the room.  As I go in the door I turn to look at him.  He is paging her and he looks like he is afraid for his life.  He must know that he has a tiger by the tail, because I’ll cane him to death, and Callie might break all the bones in his body, because he knows her and by now he knows that she’s not talking to me.  He is perceptive after all.  
  
Callie is having nothing to do with it when she comes in, and Karev all but pushes her into the room and traps her with the door.  She stands there breathing angrily and trying not to look at me, but eventually the doctor in her kicks in.  I am sitting on the patient counter with my leg stretched out and an ice pack on my ankle.  Karev was kind enough to get it for me after he said that he paged and noticed how swollen my ankle was.  As I re-adjust it Callie’s eyes can’t help but look.    
  
“I thought you said your ankle was fine!”  She snaps at me not hiding the anger at all.  But I’m glad to feel her wrath; I bask in it.  It is so much better than her silence.  
  
“My ankle was fine, but I went to check on it today and it was so much worse.”  
  
“Why haven’t you been wearing your brace?”  
  
“I have been.  Look at it, it looks like I’ve been wearing it for months not weeks.”  
  
She glances back at my discarded brace, sock and shoe on the floor.  She shakes her head.  “I knew you wouldn’t take care of it.  I knew it.  You had to push it, didn’t you.  You had to push it and come back to work, and then you had to push it with back to back surgeries.  What did you think would happen, Erica?”  
She’s talking about my ankle, but I wonder if she’s also talking about my behavior with Molly.  Or what she has assumed was my behavior with Molly.  “I have been taking care of it, but I guess it was hurt more than you realized.  More than I realized too.”  
  
She’s glaring at me, but she comes over and starts to examine it.  She steps to the door, “Karev, we need a wheelchair.”  She turns to me.  “We have to go back down to x-ray.”  
  
***  
  
Instead of taking me back to the exam room, Callie wheels me into an x-ray room.  It’s dark, but it is the quickest place to look at the x-rays.  I get out of the wheelchair and stand beside her looking at the x-ray.  She didn’t hear me and she is looking at the film to make sure that she didn’t miss anything.  I am looking at her.  Her eyes are so intent.  I turn her to me in one small motion and cover her lips with my own.  At first she pushes me away, but I hold her.  I do not deepen the kiss, in fact I pull back so that only the front of our lips are touching and I hold her there.  It is silent for a moment and then she pulls me closer.  
  
Her hands tangle in my hair and I stumble because my ankle is really not working well without the brace, but she catches me and holds on.  I think that she is holding me to stop from drowning and if I don’t save her, then she will drag me down with her.  It is a ferocious kiss filled with anger and frustration and our own lack of getting it right.  It is tongues and teeth and heat.  And then we are cheek to cheek and hugging so tightly that we can’t breath, but we can’t let go.  
  
“We either need to be in a relationship and talk to each other right now and make it happen, or we need to stop it and stop hurting each other.”  
  
She pulls back and processes what I’ve just said.  “You can’t just kiss me and then lay down the gauntlet.”  She says in a whisper.  
  
“You can’t just ask me to endlessly understand and never actually get around to explaining.”  I whisper back.  
  
“You can’t just shut me out when you are fed up with me.”  
  
“You can’t turn to someone else when your issue is with me.”  
  
She says something in the tiniest whisper, but I can’t hear it.  She has been brave and confident until now, but her voice has dropped and she is not looking me in the eye. “What, Callie?  Your response must be in the form of a demand.  That’s what we were doing.”  I say in a dry whisper.  She half chuckles and shakes her head.  What a dark and twisty conversation we are having.  
  
“You can’t have your cake and eat it too.  You can’t be involved with her and try to make me be the honest one.”  She was looking everywhere but at me but now she turns full face to mine and her eyes search my face before locking onto my eyes with her own.  
  
And then I realize what she must have seen, what her version of me must have been.  Callie and I have been floundering.  Yet she watched my relationship with Molly budding.  It took so long for me to become friends with anyone at Seattle Grace.  It took even longer and some accidents for me to let my guard down enough that Callie slipped into close friendship.  It took a thump to the head from Addison to make us realize we were so much more than friends.  Callie has seen me go from the Ice Queen to her Erica, but it wasn’t a quick or easy journey.  Unfortunately now she has also seen me go even quicker to being Molly’s Erica.  I’m not Molly’s, but that has to be what she has seen.  That has to be what she interpreted from how we have been acting, just as Addison interpreted it from Callie and I all those months ago.  Nothing had been going on when Addison named it, and nothing was going on when Molly named it, but even though it wasn’t named—it was there.  
  
“Oh, Callie.”  I whisper and reach out to her.  “I don’t have my cake and I am not trying to eat it too.”  
  
“Erica, I need to be clear.  With George I was chosen second every time.  He didn’t fight for me.  He kept his options open and never really committed to me even though we took vows.”  She swallows hard.  I think we have gotten to her core issue.  “You have been keeping options open.  You stopped fighting for me or with me as soon as Dr. Gutierrez got here.  I know that I was in the wrong with Mark.  But you didn’t fight for me.  You’re asking me to change everything and yet it’s all clear for you.  You can date me, you can try to date Molly, hell you could probably date Yang or anybody.  But you know, you’re certain, you’ve had some kind of clarifying moment and I haven’t.  I haven’t even begun to figure things out.  
  
“I have needed you.  I messed up, but I needed you.  And I finally got a chance at everything I am terrified of wanting, and then you shut me out.  I am not as quick with this or as confident with this.  I’ve rushed in before, given up my heart when it wasn’t time, and I’ve moved at warp speed when I shouldn’t.  I believed in George and he had Izzie.  I want to believe in you and you have Molly.”  
  
“I don’t have Molly.  I want to have you.”  I say it simply.  How many times to I have to make my choice in my head, to Molly, to Callie, to the world?  How many times do I have to repeat it and make it clear?  Until it sticks.  I can’t just tell her there’s nothing with Molly, I have to let Callie see that she is my priority.  
  
I wrap my arms around her then putting my cheek on her cheek.  It is tender and I am just far enough away that I can feel that her cheek is close but we aren’t touching yet.  She doesn’t respond at first.  “Come to my house tonight so I can show you.  Give me a chance to show you and have uninterrupted time with you.  Please?  We can’t keep having these half conversations.  Please Callie.”  
  
Callie nods and then she is kissing me with all the pent up emotion that has been building and I return her kiss with just as much emotion.  As our tongues slide together to turns to passion and I know that we will work it out.  Because we know that this is not the time to quit.  
  
  
 _ **THE END**_


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